10.21.14

"I'm going out to fetch the little cow. I shan't be gone long...you come too?" This phrase is something my mother would say to me (in variations, it never seems to be the same, in addition to being not textually correct, but we'll ignore that in favor of a pleasant memory) as a query. While I doubt this phrase predated a poetic understanding in me, I imagine Frost is the first exposure for many children to poetry.

Here is the actual text of that poem, The Pasture:


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 may):
I sha'n'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 sha'n't be gone long.--You come too. 


I can remember in grade school reading/listening to Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and catching the rhyme pattern. I felt like I had unlocked a great secret, and I didn't share it with my classmates. In middle school, in an advanced English class, we looked at the work again, and imagine my surprise that not only was my secret not a secret, but it was likely the most salient feature of the work. Frost is probably the first poet I can remember by name, although children are exposed to a variety of lects of poetry through nursery rhymes (and a variety of historical references, although they do not always know it). Some can remember their first exposure (Taylor Swift claims hers was Dr Seuss), others get lost amid all the other knowledge we gain during that time.

Frost's poems are the ideal next step from children-specific rhyming material. The work is approachable, despite some antiquated grammar forms, the meter is satisfying to the ear. The themes are rather approachable too; nature, farming, the condition of our not-too-distant ancestors, as well as emotions that are ever-relevant.

Here's another I remember liking, also about a cow:


The Cow in Apple Time

Something inspires the only cow of late
To make no more of a wall than an open gate,
And think no more of wall-builders than fools.
Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools
A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,
She scorns a pasture withering to the root.
She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten.
The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.
She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.
She bellows on a knoll against the sky.
Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.