The Rob I Knew - Musings on Robert Frost
Carl Burell reminisces about his old friend Robert Frost, sharing stories about Rob with the people of Derry, New Hampshire attending the Centennial Celebration of Derry in 1927.
This reenactment offers an inside look at the early years of Robert Frost through the eyes of Carl Burell, a childhood friend, farming mentor and hired hand on Frost’s first farm in Derry. Carl’s closeup view provides a unique perspective on Frost’s life among the people of Derry, whom he freely appropriated in much of his poetry. Carl reflects on the experience of personally appearing as hapless fodder in Frost’s successful conversion of the slow demise of the New England family farm into revered and fully monetized literature. Throughout, Carl offers oral interpretations of many of his favorite Frost poems, applying his own native sound of sense to the transcendent poetry of Robert Frost.
The author and voice of this podcast, a reticent but displaced New Hampshire native, is a lifelong devotee of Robert Frost poetry and is very pleased to be channeling Carl Burrell. You can reach him at carlburell1927 at gmail dot com.
Selected Bibliography
Chiasson, Dan. “Bet the Farm,” The New Yorker, February 2, 2014.
Dana, Mrs. William Star. How to Know the Wild Flowers. New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons. 1904
Frost, Robert. Selected Letters. Edited by Lawrance Thompson. New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1964.
----------------. The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, Complete and
Unabridged. Edited by Edward Connery Lathem. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston. 1969.
----------------. Robert Frost: Poetry and Prose. Edited by Edward Connery Latherm and
Lawrance Thompson. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1972.
----------------. The Notebooks of Robert Frost. Edited by Robert Faggen. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
Holmes, Richard. (2014, July 18). The Hood Farm. Londonderry News.
http://www.londonderrynh.net/2014/07/the-hood-farm/74622
Lathem, E. Connery, et al.. Robert Frost, Farm-poultryman: the Story of Robert Frost's
Career As a Breeder And Fancier of Hens & the Texts of Eleven Long-forgotten
Prose Contributions by the Poet, Which Appeared In Two New England Poultry
Journals In 1903-05, During His Years of Farming At Derry, New Hampshire.
Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth Publications, 1963.
Parini, Jay. Robert Frost: A Life. New York. Henry Holt and Company. 1999.
Poirier, Richard. Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing. Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press. 1977.
-----------------. “Tough Enough to Live,” The New York Times, November 6, 1966.
Pritchard, William H. Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered. New York: Oxford University
Press. 1984.
Sanders, David. A Divided Poet: Robert Frost, North of Boston, and the Drama of
Disappearance. Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2011.
Stefanik, Jean. (n.d.). NH Native Orchid Project, The New Hampshire Orchid Society.
https://www.nhorchids.org/page-1579474
Thompson, Lawrence, Robert Frost: The Early Years, 1874-1915. New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1966.
----------------. Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915-1938. Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1970.
Walsh, John Evangelist. Into My Own: The English Years of Robert Frost. New York:
GrovePress, 1988.
Zhou, Li. (2015, January 9). Orchidelirium, an Obsession with Orchids, Has Lasted for
Centuries. Smithsonian Magazine.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/
orchidelirium-obsession-orchids-lasted-centuries-180954060/
The Rob I Knew - Musings on Robert Frost
8 - Losing Elliott featuring “Out, Out--”” by Robert Frost
Carl Burell speaks at the Derry Centennial Celebration of 1927, telling of witnessing the pain of losing a child. Carl reads Frost's poem, 'Out, Out-'.
‘Out, Out—’
By Robert Frost
The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.