Poetry-Review

“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost, from THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST: THE COLLECTED POEMS, COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2002. Henry Holt: New York, 2002; originally published in 1923. I first came across Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay” two-and-a half years ago, nestled in a copy of S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders. To this day, I have every word of the poem memorized. It is a quick poem that says so much in so little. It combines powerful figurative language and a deeper meaning, crafts beautiful imagery, and creates a fluid sound pattern. First, anyone who likes the outdoors and outdoor writing will enjoy “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” Every line of the poem relates to some sort of item in nature: Frost touches on the Garden of Eden, the sky, and the earth. With the second line (“Her hardest hue to hold”), Frost also personifies nature as someone struggling to hold onto her prettiest hues in her early hours. Though there are a number of possible readings for this line, it is easily comparable to children in their innocent years: an individual is guiltless and pure early on, which is the “gold” of life, yet innocence is something that stays “only so an hour.” After all, as Frost points out, everything ends. Eventually, a golden flower must join the other flowers on the ground, when “dawn goes down to day.” While it is sad that every good thing can’t last forever, Frost uses dawn and day instead of day and night to show that there are hopes for the future. He still manages to make the poem optimistic. Through minimal words, Frost still forms a beautiful scene. His imagery, though confined to just eight lines and forty words, allows any reader to see spring. I imagined a sunshine-yellow daffodil (“Nature’s first green is gold”) bloom, then wilt. I imagined a violet twilight turn into blackness, ending the dawn. Each word in the poem has a purpose and together forms a visual that any reader can see. What I love the most about this poem is its number of powerful words. Additionally, the couplet rhyming scheme and similar syllable count in each line give the poem a watery flow. The words and sounds form a cohesive work, instead of a choppy, peppery, scattered slew of letters. When I first read the poem, I never imagined it would have such an effect on me. “Nothing Gold Can Stay” is a golden piece that any reader would enjoy as it appeals to a wide audience through a gorgeous combination of descriptive words, a layer that is deeper than just a picture, and its concise but nice phonetic pattern. And for all these reasons, I think this poem can stay. Maya Wolfford, 13Cincinnati, OH

“This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams, from THE COLLECTED POEMS: VOLUME I, 1909-1939, ©1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. New Directions: New York, 1991; originally published in 1934. “This is Just to Say” is a wonderful and detailed imagist poem by William Carlos Williams. After it was published in 1934, it became one of Williams’s most popular poems. With only 28 words and no continuous rhyme scheme, no meter, and no punctuation, “This Is Just to Say” captures an innocent apology for eating “the plums that were in the icebox,” and yet it could mean much more. While many believe that the poem was a note written by Williams to his wife after indeed eating the plums that were in the icebox, others believe that the poem could represent a premature death of a loved one. The plums, while once here and being saved for breakfast, have now been eaten and no longer, well, exist. They are gone. This poem has been interpreted by many, and not one interpretation has been agreed upon. That is part of the beauty of this poem: it is an experience for each reader alone. One reader may see the poem as nothing more than an apology, and another could find another meaning within. The two might never agree, but for each, the meaning of the poem is theirs. That is the way in which we can all connect with this, or any, poem; it can be ours. The speaker of the poem (either Williams or simply a fictional narrator), who is also responsible for eating the plums, explains the simple reasons for their temptation and ultimate consumption of the plums despite the fact they were (probably) being saved for breakfast. This tells us how much the writer wanted the plums, and how could we blame him? Many people would probably have done the same had they been faced with choosing between eating cold plums now versus allowing them to be saved for later. Nevertheless, the narrator asks for forgiveness. We can wonder what kind of guilt the plums have finally brought the narrator and hope that it was not too much. This poem allows us to connect with the narrator in hopes that he has not come to regret happily eating the sweet plums. This poem, while lacking length, holds much more. It holds a strong connection with the imagination. With only the words “they were delicious / so sweet / and so cold,” we are able to picture and feel the plums Williams so simply and yet vividly describes. We can picture the plums, the icebox, the note. This short poem has a neverending ability to inspire the pictures that we can create in our minds. Williams’s considerate apology is everyone’s place for imagination. Not only does this poem inspire imagination, but it inspires our senses. “Delicious,” “sweet,” and “cold” are all we need to feel the plums. The word “delicious” fills the mouth, much like plums and the word “plum” itself. Speaking the word “delicious” takes everything of the speaking mouth which is overwhelmed by the dynamic spectrum of movement the word requires. Eating plums requires much maneuvering of the mouth as well. Slowing the quick push intended to work through the skin is the first task, and carefully working around the pit is next. Speaking the word “delicious” takes a similar effort. We move through the “d” to immediately slow to prepare for the climactic “-licious” that we move through with great care. Now, I am not saying that Williams deliberately picked the word “delicious” because speaking it is similar to eating a plum (instead of picking the word because it is one of the more impactful ways of saying that something tastes good), but I can suggest that it certainly inspires the senses and helps the feeling of eating plums reach the reader. “This is Just to Say” is a great poem—especially as far as poems with fewer than 30 words go! Twyla Coburn, 13Portland, OR

“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens, from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF WALLACE STEVENS: THE CORRECTED EDITION, edited by John N Serio and Chris Beyers, New York: Vintage, 2015. Vintage: New York, 2015; originally published in 1954. Wallace Stevens was an American modernist poet who was born in Pennsylvania in 1879. He worked as an executive for an insurance company in Connecticut, but when he had free time, his imagination took over, and he wrote beautiful poems. In 1954, he wrote “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” a gorgeous poem that describes a blackbird on windy days and in cold seasons. Each of the 13 short stanzas shows one perspective of the blackbird without giving the reader any background story. Instead, the poet intertwines imagery, musical terms, and euphoric sounds to engage and encourage the reader to dive deeper when interpreting the poem. What I like the most about the poem is the imagery, which replaces a strict storyline. Imagery, in any form of literature, is very powerful because it allows the reader to place herself within the scene that’s being described. With imagery, descriptions are much more intriguing and vivid to the reader. For example, the lines “At the sight of blackbirds / Flying in a green light” gave me the warm and magical feeling of traveling through sunlight filtered between green leaves. There are also less straightforward images in the poem that left me entranced and contemplating the meaning of each line. For instance, when I read, “When the blackbird flew out of sight, / It marked the edge / Of one of many circles,” I didn’t know how to interpret it at first. But then I thought of the last two lines of the previous stanza, “. . . the blackbird is involved / In what I know.” This made me think of the bird flying into the narrator’s mind and leaving a mark on him, one of the many things he will carry with him in his life. Along with the imagery, the fifth stanza really stuck out to me because I am a violinist. It reads, “I do not know which to prefer, / The beauty of inflections / Or the beauty of innuendoes, / The blackbird whistling / Or just after.” In music, an inflection is a change in pitch, which can be achieved by doing vibrato—that is, creating an echoing sound that makes the note a hundred times livelier. On the other hand, an innuendo is the aftermath of an increase or decrease in volume. It’s like the whisper that comes through half-open windows, the sound of wind through curtains. As a musician, I loved how the blackbird is portrayed as a very delicate instrument, and it helped me appreciate the bird’s song in a way I hadn’t before. But it’s not just musical terms that give this poem its melodic feeling. The poet also uses phrases that sound like what they describe, which gives the poem a fun edge. For example, the first stanza reads, “Among twenty snowy mountains, / The only moving thing / Was the eye of the blackbird.” When you read this out loud, the phrase, “twenty snowy mountains,” actually sounds like the mountain peaks because the words’ stresses move up and down at a quick pace. Say it out loud, you’ll see! Also, in the line, “The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds,” the words “whirled” and “winds” capture the sound of circular gusts of wind. As a whole, this poem is packed with graceful imagery and interesting sounds, which left me in a trance after reading it. The writing conveys many feelings and effects: stillness, playfulness, mystery, and nostalgia. Because the poem’s meaning isn’t straightforward, it pushes readers to ask themselves questions about what the blackbird symbolizes and encourages readers to discover its many meanings. So I want to ask you: what do you think? How do you interpret this poem? What do you think the blackbird means in each stanza? Sabrina Guo, 13Oyster Bay, NY