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Morton Marcus: This is KUSP Santa Cruz, Monterey, Salinas on 88.9 FM on your dial. And yes it is time for a very special Poetry Show. Keep listening. What I've tasted of desire I old with those who favor fire.

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ut if it had to perish twice I hink I know enough of hate to ay that for destruction ice is lso great and would suffice. His name was Robert Frost and he is one of the great American poets of all time. He was born March 26th, 1874, believe it or

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not, in San Francisco, although he is recognized as being a New England poet. His father and his mother came from New England. And his father, being very restless, tried to get his fortune in San Francisco in the 1870s and died when Frost was

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10. And then, Frost's mother, who was a schoolteacher, took the two children back to New England and managed, with the help of her father, to bring up and educate her children. Frost was valedictorian of his class, went to Dartmouth, did not last

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very long because early on he had a great suspicion of the academic life. He tried a variety of jobs. The job that he kept with most was the writing of poetry. But of course, as many of you know, that does not bring in any money. He married

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one of his classmates from high school, had children and tried to go back to college, this time to Harvard; he lasted two years and decided that college was not for him. That's very funny because some, though he never got a degree, he

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would make most of his money besides from his books by teaching as a poet residence from one college to another. And in fact, going back and getting 16 honorary degrees, both- two of them from Dartmouth and Harvard, and becoming in the

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process the very, very icon of the poet laureate of America almost as much so as Walt Whitman. He had many, many rejection slips and finally he left the United States and decided to live in England. He sold one of his farms, went to

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England and was immediately accepted over there. His first book came out in 1913, that was, "Boy's Will," And it was an immediate success. He was very, very popular with the Georgian poets over in England and began to have his reputation there. A

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young Ezra Pound, in fact, did a review of his book for Poetry Magazine, which started in 1912 in the United States, and it's still going, and in- a year later, he came out with his second book in England, which was, "North of Boston," and told

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his wife now that I'm being reviewed, and now this book will be published in America, it's time for us to go home. And he came home and never looked back. In fact, "North of Boston," which has only 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,

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16 poems in it, is a landmark in American poetry, very comparable to the first edition of, "Leaves of Grass," and Wallace Stevens's, "Harmonium." So many of his great poems are from that book, "Mending Wall," "Death of the Hired Man," "Home Burial,"

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"After Apple-Picking," "The Woodpile," so many that you can tell that Frost is on his way with his second book. So, tonight what I plan on doing is to read and talk about some of Frost's poem, what makes him unique to me, and also have

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Frost himself read some of his poems. In fact, I'm going to be doing that in just a few moments, because we did and he was recorded quite extensively in his life. Now, I think there's another reason that I want to celebrate for Frost's

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birthday. Of course, it's very convenient that it falls on the night that the Poetry Show is given. But it sort of brings, it seems to me, into perspective the insane fads and political correctness that affect all parts of our life and even

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poetry. Today, Robert Frost would probably be sneered at, and in fact, he is sort of on the outs of the literary world because of the biography that has come out and has reported him to be a less than kindly man, in fact, a rather vicious

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man. But more I think, if that biography had never come out, he would be suspect now and would fall on the ropes, because he is a white, European American, male. And so, those three things which seemed to hold everyone in such poor states now, I hope

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that you will listen tonight to what makes a really great poet and for me, that is Frost's amazing control and use of language, to have language do exactly what he wants it to. There's also something very American not only in that

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language, but in the skepticism and irony and quiet humor of his work that really reflects not only a whole generation, but a whole way of looking at the world which is American, which by the American includes so many different ameliorations of

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different groups coming from everywhere, both in Asia and Europe, and Africa. And I hope to be able to show that tonight. Let me give you some idea of what I call, though, his plain sound. And there's a story that is, Ezra Pound wrote Frost a

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letter and said: You really have a lot of talent and I think you can be a really fine poet but you have to start working in free verse and what I see is that you used all these closed forms and metrics and rhymes and all that, and I would suggest

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that you become really experimental and move out in the direction of 20th century poets such as I, Pound and Eliot are doing and William Carlos Williams are doing. We do not know whether Frost ever replied to Pound. What we do know is

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within eight to nine months of receiving that letter, Frost was publishing sonnets. So, he certainly- if actions are answers, he was saying no, he was going to use the same metrics and the same old ways of saying things that had been used

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by the great English poets for centuries before him. And again, what's so marvelous is the way he uses these metrics and rhymes and makes them sound totally his own, as though they are the words of a New England farmer. And here is just, I will give a

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very brief example of that with a small poem called: A MINOR BIRD. And it went, it goes like this: I have wished the bird would fly away and not sing by my house all day. I've clapped my hands at him from the door, when it

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seemed I could bear no more. The fault must partly have been in me, the bird was not to blame for his key. And of course, there must be something wrong in wanting to silence any song. And there's that wonderful sense of language and he's, as I said,

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even in such a closed form, the- here is a sonnet and remember your Shakespearean sonnets and here's a sonnet by him, in which it's got all the rhyme schemes, A-BB-A-A-BB-A, it's a petrarchan sonnet very, very difficult to write in English. And even the

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last six lines are only in two rhymes, in fact, they repeat the one of the rhymes, the A rhyme of the the first eight lines, but it sounds so absolutely his own you don't even realize you're reading a rhymed closed verse poem, it's called,

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"Design." And again it is his philosophical look at fate and death in this spider holding up a dead moth, which he is observing on a table and here it is. And just listen to his absolutely wonderfully capturing in this closed verse which has

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been used for hundreds upon hundreds of years in English poetry, the 20th century New England, dialect and tone. DESIGN I found a dimpled spider, fat and white on a white heal-all,

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holding up a moth, like a white piece of rigid satin cloth. Assorted characters of death and blight, mixed ready to begin the morning right, like the ingredients of a witches' broth. A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth and dead wings

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carried like a paper kite. What had that flower to do with being white, the wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, then steer the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to

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appall? If design govern in a thing so small. And just one more of those very, very small poems, he of course was always writing about nature, although he had some city poems, in fact, I can maybe read one later on. Many of his poems deal

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with mowing, with walking in the woods, with chopping wood, or viewing runaway horses, and things like that, or just birds and here is listening to thrush music in the dark, when he's going out to do something out of a dark night. And it's called:

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COME IN and it just plays with this idea of coming in and going out. And again, just listen to how effortless this poem seems to be even though it is rhymed in very strict metric and gets that sound again of the New Englander speaking.

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As I came to the edge of the woods, thrush music, hark. Now if it was dusk outside, inside it was dark. Too dark in the woods for a bird by sleight of wing to better its perch for the night, though it still could sing. The last light of the sun

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that had died in the west still lived for one song more in a thrush's breast. Far in the pillared dark, thrush music went, almost like a call to come in to the dark and lament. But no, I was out for stars. I would not come in. I meant not even if

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asked and I hadn't been. Let us some turn to Robert Frost now, himself, and let us hear him read some of his earliest and most famous poems, three of them, "The Road Not Taken," The Pasture," and, "Mowing," and

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especially, "The Pasture," and, "Mowing," these are very, very early works from his first book. And here is the poet Robert Frost, reading these poems. Again first, THE ROAD NOT TAKEN, then, THE PASTURE, and then, M

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WING. They're not very long. So ere we go. Robert Frost: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. And sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the

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undergrowth, then took the other, as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear. Though as for that the passing there had worn them really about the same, and both that morning equally lay in

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leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day, yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence, two roads diverged in a wood and

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I- I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. I'm going out to clean the pasture spring, I'll only stop to rake the leaves away, and wait to watch the water clear, I

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may, I shan't be gone long. You come too. I'm going out to fetch the little calf that's standing by the mother. It's so young, it totters when she licks it with her tongue. I shan't be gone long. You come too.

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There was never a sound beside the wood but one, and that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself. Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, something, perhaps, about the

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lack of sound and that was why it whispered and did not speak. It was no dream of the gift of idle hours, or easy gold at the hand of a fay or elf. Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak to the earnest love that laid the swale in

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rows, not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers, pale orchises, and scared a bright green snake. The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows. My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

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Morton Marcus: And that was Robert Frost reading three early poems. One of the most famous poems from this second book, "North of Boston," is, "Birches." And I'm going to have Robert Frost read it now. What I want you to realize is that this

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form of "Birches," is blank verse. And it is the same form blank verse that almost all of Shakespeare's plays, almost 100% of them, are written in. It is iambic pentameter, unrhymed, that is 10 syllables per line, every other syllable accented.

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And you know what Shakespeare sounds like and you know, of course, that the language had changed a lot. That's true but notice how Frost makes this completely his own. And here he is musing upon birch trees, and how boys used to swing on birch

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trees. And he makes a philosophical statement out of this. This is one of his most famous poems, and one of his earliest. He achieved great fame and was asked to read this over and over again in the early years before World War One and

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then after World War One. So here is Robert Frost reading, "Birches." A poem, remember, that is in the same form as the Shakespeare plays, blank verse, and yet notice how much he makes it all his own.

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BIRCHES OR BIRCH TREES Robert Frost: When I see birches bend to left and right across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down

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to stay as ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them loaded with ice a sunny winter morning after rain. They click upon themselves as the breeze rises, and turn many-colored as the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth

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makes them shed crystal shells shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust. Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away.You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, and they seem not to

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break, though once they are bowed so low for long, they never right themselves: you may see their trunks arching in the woods years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair before them

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over their heads to dry in the sun. But I was going to say when Truth broke in with all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm, I should prefer to have had some boy bend them as he went out and in to fetch the cows, some boy too far from town

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to learn baseball, whose only play was what he found himself, summer or winter, and could play alone. One by one he subdued his father's treets by riding them down over and over again until it took the stiffness out of them, and not one but hung limp,

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not one was left for him to conquer. He learned all there was to learn about not launching out too soon and so not carrying the tree away clear to the ground. He always kept his poise to the top branches, climbing carefully with the same pains

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you use to fill a cup up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It's

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when I'm weary of considerations, and life is too much like a pathless wood where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs broken across it, and one eye is weeping from a twig's having lashed across it open. I'd like to get away from

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earth awhile and then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me and half grant what I wish and snatch me away not to return. Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better. I'd like to

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go by climbing a birch tree and climb black branches up a snow-white trunk, toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, but dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a

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swinger of birches. Morton Marcus: And again, that was Robert Frost reading, "Birch Trees." The other thing about Frost that is so marvelous, and some people don't talk about it, it just seems that every word

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with a great poet is right. I mean, obviously you can always revise and nothing is perfection, but it just seems as though he is always doing that. His description of this ice-storm and the branches themselves "loaded with ice a

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sunny winter morning after a rain." Okay, so it's these icy branches, "they click upon themselves as the breeze rises, and turn many-colored as they stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells,

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shattering and avalanching on the snow crust, such heaps of broken glass to sweep away you think the inner dome of heaven had fallen." But just listen to the 's' sounds there. You get that sense of that shoot of glass, "soon the sun's warmth

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makes them shed crystal shells, shattering and avalanching on the snow crust." I mean, you can just hear the ice breaking up and falling to the ground. But you know, then this picture which is so, so great of what they look like years afterwards,

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these trees that have been bent down, this is what they look at: "You may see their trunks arching in the woods years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground, like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair before them over

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their heads to dry in the sun." I mean, it's just so beautiful. It's just, it's said so simply and so perfectly. And we've all seen trees, not necessarily birches, which has those elastic trunks and elastic branches, but anything that has its leaves and

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its branch leaves pushed towards the ground. I'm going to read that again and it is just so perfect. What does it look like? "You may see their trunks arching in the woods years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground, like girls

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on hands and knees that throw their hair before them over their hands to dry in the sun." So this, this is Robert Frost, and this is the subject for tonight's show. He was born, as I said, this night in 1874 in San Francisco. Let me read you

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one of my favorite poems to show his great philosophical stance. He had no objection to being didactic, that is teaching and moralistic, but he was never dogmatic. And really, most of the time he just took a very skeptical, a very ironic look at

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the world's foibles. Let me read you one of my favorite poems by him. And it's called, "The Most of It," and it goes like this. It's one of these great poems and you people who've been listening to the

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show for a long time know that I have read it before. It's one of these marvelous poems about this man who thinks that he holds the universe himself, and in his great loneliness, he thought that, you know, everything in the world really centers on him.

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And that if he would call for love, that love that the universe will reply to him and will respond. Now, there is shockingly a response here, but notice the irony of this, beautiful again descriptions for the second half of the poem,

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after moving from the abstractions of the beginning, which seemed very right and seemed the way to define this very, very narcissistic, ego-centered male, who is calling out to have the universe answer his call for love. And

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we've all had these moments when we've gone out and cried out for some kind of meaning, some kind of relationship to know that we're not alone in the universe. And this is one of my favorite Frost poems, and it is because of the irony and the tone that

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he gets out of it. So: THE MOST OF IT He thought he kept the universe alone for all the voice and answer he could wake was but the mocking echo of his own from

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some tree-hidden cliff, across the lake. Some morning from the boulder-broken beach, he would cry out on life, that what it wants is not its own love back in copy speech, but counter-love, original response. And nothing ever came of what he

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cried unless it was the embodiment that crashed in the cliff's talus on the other side, and then in the far distant water splashed, but after a time allowed for it to swim, instead of proving human when it neared, and someone else additional to

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him, as a great buck it powerfully appeared, pushing the crumpled water up ahead, and landed pouring like a waterfall and stumbled through the rocks with horny tread, and forced the underbrush, and that was all.

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And what I love about that poem is that finally one day, this person gets his answer and it seems as though nature, i.e. God, is answering his request for a love, for a human counterpart to his love. Instead there's this wild crashing into

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the river and then suddenly up from the river [cut-off]. And we are with that wonderful bit of music from Aaron Copeland's, "The Red Pony," a very American score, in this case on a short story collection by John Steinbeck, which was

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made into a movie, we are celebrating the birthday today of Robert Frost who was born March 26th, 1874. And we've got some very important announcements for you. First of all, My co-host Joseph Stroud, and Jennifer Lagier will be

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reading this Friday, March 31st, at 7:30pm at the Thunderbird Bookstore, in the Barnyard in Carmel. Now, this is a rarity. Joe hardly ever reads and all you people down in Monterey and Carmel, I urge you to come and listen to Joe read. He is a

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marvelous poet. You've heard him on the show with me for years now and he is not only a fine host for the show here, but he very, very rarely reads his own poems. And I know he's going to be reading new work as many of you know, he is the author of

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two very, very much praised books, "In the Sleep of Rivers," and, "Signatures," and he has been working on a lot of new poems of late so come to the reading of both Joe and Jennifer Lagier this coming Friday, March 31st, at 7:30pm at the

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Thunderbird Bookstore, 3600 The Barnyard in Carmel. This is a reading that was rescheduled so tell your friends because some of the first floods around two weeks ago called this reading off and now it has been rescheduled, so be aware that it

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is happening this coming Friday the 31st of March. Also, I would like with KUSP to thank Stapleton's Grocery, Just Basics for providing a grant to help make this program possible. Just Basics, an original concept in natural and organic foods,

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retailing next to Trader Joe's in Capitola on 44, 41st Avenue, so they have been a Stapleton's and now Just Basics have been the sponsors of this show for a long, long time. Take a look, it's a wonderful natural food store and if you're obviously up

00:34:06.400 - 00:34:26.800

near Trader Joe's get two things done at once. As I read Robert Frost I also have been handed a news brief on the San Jose Mercury News report that someone is mutilating books in libraries from Santa Cruz to Milpitas. More than 200 books have been

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vandalized by a razor, most of the books are of modern American poetry. This is very interesting. It has sort of insult adding insult to injury since no one reads modern American poetry anyway. Now we've got someone who is

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destroying it, so the insanity of this country continues and never ceases to amaze me. But let us get back to a place where we can feel some composure, some sense of solidity, and that is the poems

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of Robert Frost, which are deceptive because almost all of the poems of Robert Frost really do not give us a sense of peacefulness at all, but really make us wonder and question all the more. But I have been asked by Leslie to read a very

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specific poem, which I will do now. And it is, of course, one of his most quoted poems, and I think, again, one of his most perfect, and it's called, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." And, you know, there's a very famous story about this,

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how Archibald MacLeish called on the now very famous Frost into his workshop on modern poetry at Harvard, and had his graduate class discuss the meaning of, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," and the discussion went on for hours and everyone

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started to argue with each other and many people said that this real poem really showed a deathwish but showed the responsibility we have to keep going even if we would like to quit our lives because we did have responsibilities to others,

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and that the woods are really death beckoning to us. While the conversation was going on, supposedly froth began, Frost began to smile, and a little twinkle came into his eyes. And finally, in the end of the class, some MacLeish looked up

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and said, "Well, we're lucky to have the poet here, and he can clear up the argument." And Frost said, and he asked Frost, he says, "What is the meaning of this poem, 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,'" and Frost just smiled and turned from

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MacLeish to the class and said, "Well, certainly was interesting hearing all this talk from these young people" says, "but the fact of the matter is, all I wanted to describe was what it was like to stop by woods on a snowy evening." And of course,

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you have to realize that the poet was being less than in- than ingenuous because he really had a lot of meetings but being a canny old soul, he knew that if he could create such arguments upon among such learning people, he would be a

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fool to give away whatever the secret might be, keep them arguing. For Leslie, here in the studio, our hardworking and very talented colleague, here is, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," and again, notice how very, very tight this rhyme

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scheme is, and this metric is, but notice how natural it sounds at every little word, even the word "shake" here just has this great sense of almost giving you the sound of the bells, every word just perfectly chosen to convey and evoke this scene.

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STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though. He will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer

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to stop without a farmhouse near between the woods and frozen lake the darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake, to ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely,

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dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep. And just to show you how really tight this poem is, it is in four beats of iambic pentameter, "Whose woods these are, I think

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I know. His house is in the village, though." But the rhyme scheme for each one of these quatrains is extraordinary. It's AA-BA and by that I mean, he has three lines that rhyme together, and one that doesn't. And then he picks up the one word that

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doesn't rhyme and makes it the three lines that rhyme in the next stanza. So you get this it's "no," "though," and, "snow," in the first stanza, and the the word that does not rhyme is, "here," and that gets picked up in the next stanza as,

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"queer," "near," and, "year." In the second stanza, the word that does not rhyme is, "lake," which gets picked up as, "shake," "mistake," and, "flake," and it sounds so natural. And, "sweep," as the unrhymed word which he rhymes all four lines with in

00:40:01.210 - 00:40:15.790

the last stanza. Let me read this poem again to show you what I mean by how easy he makes everything. Let's just say this: we all admire Willie Mays for making it look easy in centerfield, the poet's got to do the same thing if he has to

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enter his Hall of Fame. So here is again with that in mind, and I will pause between each one of these stanzas. You'll hear the rhymes now and just realize the word that is not rhymed is going to be picked up as the three rhyme words of the next stanza

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and so on, all the way down for these four stanzas, so I'll read it again. STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING Whose woods these are I think I know. His houses in the village,

00:40:46.780 - 00:41:06.970

though. He will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer to stop without a farmhouse near between the woods and frozen lake the darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells

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a shake to ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.

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So there you are, Leslie, who was sitting here and here being an audience, which is great. Now another part of living in the country is of course superstition. And here is one of the great almost half comic and yet terrifying ghost poems,

00:41:48.320 - 00:42:06.380

which I played on Halloween night years ago, the famous, "Witch of Coos," and the story of the Witch of Coos and who is locked in the attic by Robert Frost and let's hear now, Frost actually reading this, this marvelous poem. So, back to

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Robert Frost reading his horror poem: THE WITCH OF COOS Robert Frost: I staid the night for shelter at a farm behind the mountain, with a mother and son, two old-believers. They did all

00:42:33.310 - 00:42:48.550

the talking. The mother says: folks think a witch who has familiar spirits she could call up to pass a winter evening, but won't, should be burned at the stake or something. Summoning spirits

00:42:48.550 - 00:42:59.970

isn't, "Button, button, who's got the button," I would have The son (he's about forty years old): Mother can make a common them know. table rear and kick with two legs like an army mule.

00:43:01.150 - 00:43:18.490

She says: and when I've done it, what good have I done? Rather than tip a table for you, let me tell you what Ralle the Sioux Control once told me. He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him how that could be, I thought the dead were souls, he

00:43:18.490 - 00:43:29.980

broke my trance. Don't that make you suspicious that there's something the dead are keeping back? Think the dead are keeping back. You wouldn't want to tell him what we have up attic, mother?

00:43:31.840 - 00:43:46.750

Bones, a skeleton. But the headboard of mother's bed is pushed against the attic door, the door is nailed. It's harmless. Mother hears it in the night halting perplexed behind the barrier of door and

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headboard. Where it wants to get is back into the cellar where it came from. We'll never let them, will we, son? We'll never. It left the cellar forty years ago, he says, and carried itself

00:44:01.030 - 00:44:13.150

like a pile of dishes up one flight from the cellar to the kitchen, another from the kitchen to the bedroom, another from the bedroom to the attic, right past both father and mother, and neither stopped it. Father had gone upstairs; mother

00:44:13.150 - 00:44:28.330

was downstairs. I was a baby, I don't know where I was. She says: the only fault my husband found with me, I went sleep before I went to bed, especially in winter when the bed might just as well be ice and the clothes snow. The night

00:44:28.390 - 00:44:42.880

the bones came up the cellar-stairs Toffile had gone to bed alone and left me, but left an open door to cool the room off so as to sort of turn me out of it. I was just coming to myself enough to wonder where the cold was coming from, when I

00:44:42.880 - 00:44:58.600

heard Toffile upstairs in the bedroom and thought I heard him downstairs in the cellar. The board we had laid down to walk dry-shod on when there was water in the cellar in spring struck the hard cellar bottom. And then someone began the stairs, two

00:44:58.600 - 00:45:13.960

foot steps for each step, the way a man with one leg and a crutch, or little child, comes up. It wasn't Toffile. It wasn't anyone who could be there. The bulkhead double-doors were double-locked and swollen tight and buried under snow. The

00:45:13.960 - 00:45:31.180

cellar windows were banked up with sawdust and swollen tight and buried under snow. It was the bones. I knew them, and good reason. My first impulse was to get to the knob and hold the door. But the bounds didn't try the door or they halted helpless

00:45:31.180 - 00:45:45.880

on the landing, waiting for things to happen in their favor. The faintest restless rustling ran all through them. I never could have done the thing I did if the wish hadn't been too strong in me to see how they were mounted for this walk. I

00:45:45.880 - 00:46:02.380

had a vision of them put together and not like a man, but like a chandelier. So suddenly I flung the door wide on him. A moment he stood balancing with emotion and all but lost himself. A tongue of fire flashed out and licked along his

00:46:02.380 - 00:46:17.980

upper teeth. Smoke rolled inside the sockets of his eyes. Then he came at me with one hand outstretched, the way he did in life once, but this time I struck the hand of brittle on the floor, and fell back from him on the floor myself. The

00:46:17.980 - 00:46:30.320

finger-pieces slid in all directions. (Where did I see one of those pieces lately? Hand me my button-box, it must be there.) I sat up on the floor and shouted, "Toffile, it's coming

00:46:30.320 - 00:46:46.220

up to you." It had its choice of the door to the cellar or the hall. It took the hall door for the novelty, and set off briskly for so slow a thing, still going every which way in the joints, though, so that it looked like lightning or a scribble, from

00:46:46.220 - 00:47:01.010

the slap I had just now given its hand. I listened till it almost climbed the stairs from the hall to the only finished bedroom, before I got up to do anything, then ran and shouted, "Shut the bedroom door, Toffile, for my sake," "Company," he

00:47:01.010 - 00:47:18.470

said, "Don't make me get up, I'm too warm in bed." So lying forward weakly on this handrail I pushed myself upstairs, and in the light -- the kitchen had been dark -- I had to own I could see nothing. "Toffile, I don't see it. It's with us in

00:47:18.470 - 00:47:34.400

the room though. It's the bones." "What bones?" "The cellar bones, out of the grave." That made him throw his bare legs out of bed and sit up by me and take hold of me. I wanted to put out the light and see if I

00:47:34.400 - 00:47:51.500

could see it, or else mow the room, with our arms at the level of our knees, and bring the chalk pile down. "I'll tell you what, it's looking for another door to try. The uncommonly deep snow has made him think of his old song, 'The Wild Colonial

00:47:51.500 - 00:48:10.130

Boy,' he always used to sing along the tote-road. He's after an open door to get out-doors. Let's trap him with an open door up attic." Toffile agreed to that, and sure enough, almost the moment he was given an opening, the steps began to

00:48:10.130 - 00:48:24.470

climb the attic stairs. I heard them. Toffile didn't seem to hear them. "Quick!" I slammed to the door and held the knob. "Toffile, get nails." I made him nail the door shut, and push the headboard of the bed against it.

00:48:25.290 - 00:48:40.050

Then we asked was there anything up attic that we'd ever want again. The attic was less to us than the cellar. The bones liked the attic, let them have it, let them stay in the attic. When they sometimes come down the stairs at night and stand

00:48:40.050 - 00:48:57.510

perplexed behind the door and headboard of the bed, brushing that chalky skull with chalky fingers, and sounds like the dry rattling of a shutter, that's what I sit up in the dark to say, to no one any more since Toffile died. Let them stay in

00:48:57.510 - 00:49:14.910

the attic since they went there. I promise Toffile to be cruel to them for helping them be cruel once to him. And the son says: we think they have a grave down in the cellar. And she says: we know they have a grave down in the cellar.

00:49:15.750 - 00:49:35.840

And he says: we never could find out whose bones they were. And she says: yes, we could too, son. Tell the truth for once. They were a man's his father killed for me. I mean a man he killed instead of me. The least I could do was help dig their

00:49:35.840 - 00:49:56.510

grave. We were about it one night in the cellar. Son knows the story but 'twas not for him to tell the truth, suppose the time had come. Son looks surprised to see me end a lie we'd kept up all these years between ourselves so as to have

00:49:56.510 - 00:50:21.680

it ready for outsiders. But tonight I don't care enough to lie, I don't remember why I ever cared. Toffile, if he were here, I don't believe could tell you why he ever cared himself... Morton Marcus: And that was Robert Frost reading, "The Witch

00:50:21.680 - 00:50:45.650

of Coos." "But tonight I don't care enough to lie, I don't remember why I ever cared," and certainly, what poetry does is it does not lie. It tries to strike to the truth and in that last part of the poem, we get a real psychological insight. This

00:50:45.650 - 00:51:07.070

is not just a ghost story. It is a story about a lover who was caught by the husband and killed, a family secret that finally has become public. If you will, to whoever they're telling it to, supposedly the poet, maybe some other outsider.

00:51:07.610 - 00:51:30.050

And what I love is after she gets through talking and for us to not add it in the poem, she says she says, "Toffile, if he were here, I don't believe could tell you why he ever cared himself." And then it trails off and the narrator watches her and

00:51:30.050 - 00:51:47.280

says: "She hadn't found the finger-bone she wanted among the buttons poured out in her lap. I verified the name next morning: Toffile. The rural letter-box said Toffile Barre."

00:51:49.620 - 00:52:02.820

This is followed by another poem by the way called, "The Pauper Witch of Grafton," another ghost story. But let's change this for a moment and let's go into another kind of Frost because Frost also like to write [unidentified]. Sometimes

00:52:02.850 - 00:52:23.010

[unidentified] was really raised to the level of 18th century verse, and he loved to satirize the stupidities, and insanities of modern life. And here, bureaucracy is being satirized, the mindlessness of the ant. And it's a marvelously beautiful

00:52:23.010 - 00:52:41.710

clear picture in a poem of his called: DEPARTMENTAL and it goes like this: An ant on the tablecloth ran into a dormant moth of many times his size. He showed not the least surprise. His business

00:52:41.710 - 00:53:00.280

wasn't with such. He gave it scarcely a touch and was off on his duty run. Yet if he encountered one of the hive's inquiry squad whose work is to find out God and the nature of time and space, he would put them on to the case. Ants are a

00:53:00.280 - 00:53:17.680

curious race. One crossing with hurry tread the body of one of their dead isn't given a moment's arrest, seems not even impressed. But he no doubt reports to any with whom he crosses antennae, and they no doubt report to the higher-up at

00:53:17.680 - 00:53:37.810

court. Then word goes forth in Formic, "Death's come to Jerry McCormic, our selfless forager Jerry. Will the special janizary whose office it is to bury the dead of the commissary go bring him home to his people. Lay him in state on a sepal. Wrap him

00:53:37.810 - 00:53:58.810

for shroud in a petal. Embalm him with ichor of nettle. This is the word of your Queen." And presently on the scene appears solemn mortician, and taking formal position, with feelers calmly atwiddle, seizes the dead by the middle, and heaving him

00:53:58.810 - 00:54:24.220

high in air, carries him out of there. No one stands around to stare. It's nobody else's affair it couldn't be called ungentle, but how thoroughly departmental. Let us listen to one more of Frost's poem. Maybe one of his

00:54:24.790 - 00:54:37.590

most ironic and you all know it, it's called, "Mending Wall." And here is Robert Frost for one last poem on his birthday reading and this time he is reading the famous: MENDING WALL

00:54:40.450 - 00:54:56.350

Robert Frost: Something there is that doesn't love a wall, that sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, and spills the upper boulders in the sun, and makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing, I have come after them

00:54:56.350 - 00:55:14.110

and made repair where they have left not one stone on a stone, but they would have the rabbit out of hiding, to please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, no one has seen them or heard them made, but at spring mending-time we find them there.

00:55:14.950 - 00:55:31.570

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill and on a day we meet to walk the line and set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

00:55:31.570 - 00:55:48.670

we have to use a spell to make them balance. Stay where you are until our backs are turned. We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game, one on a side. It comes to little more, there where it is we do not need

00:55:48.670 - 00:56:04.690

the wall. He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors." Spring is the mischief in me and I wonder if I could put a notion

00:56:04.690 - 00:56:20.620

in his head. Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I build a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out, and to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that

00:56:20.620 - 00:56:40.510

doesn't love a wall, that wants it down. I could say elves to him, but it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather he said it for himself. I see him there, bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top in each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves

00:56:40.510 - 00:56:53.710

in darkness as it seems to me. Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, and he likes having thought of it so well. He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

00:57:00.740 - 00:57:15.320

Morton Marcus: This week at 6:30pm after the news, KUSP presents a special program series celebrating Women's History Month. Monday night at 6:30, Molly Ivan says what's on her mind about today's political scenes in the media. Tuesday and

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Wednesday nights, we'll hear an exclusive broadcast of the 13th annual In Celebration of the Muse. 21 women writers from Santa Cruz County read their original poetry and prose in this very special benefit for women care. The program is

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hosted by Patrice Vecchione, who of course is one of our three hosts on the Poetry Show, Amber Sumrall, and produced by our own Leslie Tipton. We have been presenting tonight, a birthday celebration of Robert Frost poetry. He was born on March

00:57:46.910 - 00:58:06.080

26th, 1917- 17- 1874. I'm gonna learn to write sooner or later- And I would urge you to stay tuned for the Sunday night special which is- the topic is Big Sur women. For many of us the cost of the Big Sur is easily accessible by car but the

00:58:06.080 - 00:58:20.300

people of Big Sur remain a mystery, leading private often secluded lives away from the bustle of Highway 1 traffic. Join author and longtime Big Sur resident Judith Goodman for a journey back in time to visit the lives of the colorful

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characters that graced the south coast from the 1890s to the present. So, that's coming up next. This is Mort Marcus, I hope you enjoyed the Robert Frost show. And you will go out and look and read his poetry, both the poems we read tonight,

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and also another wonderful poem, which I think we can really use in these troubled times called, "Directive," just look it up, try to find it. Again, it's called, "Directive," and it's a wonderful sense of getting back to our roots, getting back to a

00:58:51.050 - 00:59:09.470

place within ourselves, where we have peace, solidity, serenity. I also want to remind you before I leave, that this Friday, our own Joe Stroud will be reading down in the Barnyard in Carmel at the Thunderbird Bookstore at 7:30pm with Jennifer Lagier and

00:59:09.470 - 00:59:27.170

I urge you to go and listen to it, everyone down in Monterey and in Carmel. This is a rare opportunity to hear really one of the finest poets in America, Joe Stroud, our host. He hardly ever reads. This is a rare opportunity and people from

00:59:27.170 - 00:59:43.790

Santa Cruz, get in your cars and go down and hear him this Friday night, 7:30pm in the Thunderbird Bookstore. Well, this is Mort Marcus, I'll see you in three weeks. You are listening to KUSP 88.9 FM on your dial, it serves of Santa Cruz, Monterey and

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Salinas and the Big Sur. We will be back in two weeks. Stay tuned for the wonderful Big Sur exploration with Leslie Tipton on the Sunday night special.