Eleventh grade. We are scratching our pens and quietly humming, English final.
Tell me what home is, show how Mary and Warren differ in their reliance.
Wait, Ms. Nanther? We didn't cover that! How can we do the essay?
'Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.'
'I should have called it
Something you somehow haven't to deserve.'
I did not even feel bad for having known this off by heart. Even if we didn't, indeed, cover this poem during our course.
Here is what: the man talked for us. For himself, maybe, or for whoever wanted to listen to him telling a story. Thwak (over the head). Thwak (over the head). Thwak thwak thwak.
You must have known this person was telling you something. Why wouldn't you listen?
'Robert Frost is thought of as a pastoral poet whose work reflects the scenery and life of rural New England.'No No No No. I mean, Yes, but No. Not so easy. You can't put my man in that box.
Call me typical, please. Call me stupidly innocent. Simple, even. What he does is speak transparent words, take unformed (incoherent) things from inside me and put them down. Yes, there is flowers and streams and meadow verse. Yes there is birds and skies and plain talking verse. I could not say them myself, for fear of being stupidly redundant, for fear of saying nothing new. What keeps me coming back are the little hints of elsewhere he shows me.
I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if I still held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew--
Only more sure of all I thought was true.
(Into My Own)
This is why he is good. This is why I could love him.