Some recent posts centered on butterfly poems by Dickinson and Frost. One post focused on Frost’s first poem ever published, “My Butterfly,” and another discussed butterfly poems by Dickinson which likely influenced the young poet. In George Monteiro’s book Robert Frost and the New England Renaissance, author Monteiro wrote, “Frost tried his hand at still other ‘butterfly’ poems. ‘Blue-Butterfly Day’ concisely recounts the life of a butterfly.”
 | Monteiro continued, “The poet’s tone is wistful; these creatures are not nature’s poets (how Dickinson referred to birds), though they come close: they ‘all but sing’ as their actions presage their own deaths. It is altogether fitting, therefore, that Frost, his mind on midwinter, sees his butterflies flurrying down like snowflakes to ‘freshly sliced’ graves in the April mud. For Frost, fragility sems to equate butterflies with snowflakes. Even in ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snow Evening,’ Frost echoes this theme when, playing on Dickinson’s phrase, ‘easy sweeps of sky,’ he writes of ‘the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake.’” |
Dickinson’s phrase “easy sweeps of sky,” by the way, is from line 8 of “My Cocoon tightens – Colors tease,” the very poem I discussed on Sunday, HERE, concerning the word “clew” vs. “clue” in line 12; on Monday, HERE, concerning another use of the word “clue” (all about a “cold case” for a missing person in the 1870s); and yesterday, HERE, focusing on a poem by Edward Mayes inspired by line 3 from the poem, “A dim capacity for Wings.”
Tomorrow I’ll take a closer look at sweeping in Dickinson’s poetry.
Tomorrow I’ll take a closer look at sweeping in Dickinson’s poetry.
RSS Feed
