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
10 - Trading Limericks featuring “Birches” by Robert Frost
Carl Burell speaks at the Derry Centennial Celebration of 1927, telling of Robert Frost’s fondness of teasing with limericks. Carl also reads Frost's poem, Birches.
Birches
By 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 to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a 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 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 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 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 some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town 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 trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, 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 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 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 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 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 swinger of birches.