Now where was I? Oh yes, I was discussing Robert Frost’s first poem, “My Butterfly.” (HERE)
Well, it wasn’t his first poem. It was the first poem he sold (he was paid $15.00) and the first of his works to be published (in the Independent).
Well, it wasn’t his first poem. It was the first poem he sold (he was paid $15.00) and the first of his works to be published (in the Independent).
| In a November 7, 1917, letter to Louis Untermeyer, Frost recalled that “I read my first poem at 15, wrote my first poem at 16, wrote My Butterfly at 18. That was my first poem published” However, as a student, Frost published several poems in the Lawrence, Massachusetts, High School Bulletin. The first, in the April 1890 issue, was “Lo Noche Triste” (The Night of Sorrows). The poem is a narrative ballad detailing the 1520 Aztec victory where Hernán Cortés and his army of Spanish conquistadors were driven out of the Mexica capital, Tenochtitlan. |  |
Now here’s a timeline to think about:
1874 – Frost was born in San Francisco
1885 – After the death of his father, Frost’s family moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts
1889 – Frost said, “I read my first poem at age 15…”
1890 – “wrote my first poem at 16.” (the poem above)
ALSO: In November of this year, the first edition of Poems by Emily Dickinson was published.
1891 – The second series of Dickinson’s Poems was published. Frost owned both editions of Dickinson’s poetry.
1892 – At age 18, Frost wrote “My Butterfly”
1894 – “My Butterfly” was published in the Independent
Now consider this, from George Monteiro’s Robert Frost and the New England Renaissance:
“Despite Frost’s avowed interest in Emily Dickinson, his critics have said little about the ways in which his response to her work might have contributed to the shape of his own early poetry. Some affinities and interrelated differences are discernible in Frost’s early poems, principally the small group published between 1894 and 1901, and the first Dickinson poems published in the 1890s.”
Monteiro reported, “He was immediately taken with her, discovering in her poetry the voice of a kindred New England soul” and “Emily Dickinson’s poetry was useful to Frost in various ways.” Lawrence Thompson maintained that Dickinson’s “terse, homely gnomic, cryptic, witty qualities appealed very strongly to him.” However, “My Butterfly,” a poem “laden with traditional poetic elements and archaisms” was perhaps written too early to reflect any real influence on Frost from reading Dickinson.
During a May 19, 1959, interview with poet Randall Jarrell that took place in the Library of Congress’s Recording Laboratory during Frost’s final week as “Consultant in Poetry,” Frost discussed “My Butterfly” in relation to some of the other poems that appear in his first major book, A Boy’s Will (1915). An online copy of the book is HERE.
1874 – Frost was born in San Francisco
1885 – After the death of his father, Frost’s family moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts
1889 – Frost said, “I read my first poem at age 15…”
1890 – “wrote my first poem at 16.” (the poem above)
ALSO: In November of this year, the first edition of Poems by Emily Dickinson was published.
1891 – The second series of Dickinson’s Poems was published. Frost owned both editions of Dickinson’s poetry.
1892 – At age 18, Frost wrote “My Butterfly”
1894 – “My Butterfly” was published in the Independent
Now consider this, from George Monteiro’s Robert Frost and the New England Renaissance:
“Despite Frost’s avowed interest in Emily Dickinson, his critics have said little about the ways in which his response to her work might have contributed to the shape of his own early poetry. Some affinities and interrelated differences are discernible in Frost’s early poems, principally the small group published between 1894 and 1901, and the first Dickinson poems published in the 1890s.”
Monteiro reported, “He was immediately taken with her, discovering in her poetry the voice of a kindred New England soul” and “Emily Dickinson’s poetry was useful to Frost in various ways.” Lawrence Thompson maintained that Dickinson’s “terse, homely gnomic, cryptic, witty qualities appealed very strongly to him.” However, “My Butterfly,” a poem “laden with traditional poetic elements and archaisms” was perhaps written too early to reflect any real influence on Frost from reading Dickinson.
During a May 19, 1959, interview with poet Randall Jarrell that took place in the Library of Congress’s Recording Laboratory during Frost’s final week as “Consultant in Poetry,” Frost discussed “My Butterfly” in relation to some of the other poems that appear in his first major book, A Boy’s Will (1915). An online copy of the book is HERE.
You can listen to Jarrell’s interview with Frost HERE.
At the 1:03:13 mark, Jarrell offers the following observation of Frost’s poetry in A Boy’s Will:
“It’s queer reading A Boy’s Will to find so many things quite like you, but then to find all the regular poetic inversions, and poetic license, and ’tis and o’er and the list and so on.”
Frost acknowledges these “poeticisms,” indicting “My Butterfly” as the worst offender, though he also clearly feels the poem offers a glimpse of the poet he eventually became:
“Yeah, Yeah. See they gradually eliminated themselves. I never did it on purpose. I just got a little shy about using poeticisms. Ashamed of them a little. Felt a false feeling about them. And the first one that’s kept in here, the butterfly, is the worst, you see, in that respect. The butterfly one I only kept it for one passage in it…. You see the passage that I liked was just—this was very young, I was 17 see when I wrote this.”
He then reads from the second stanza of the poem and concludes by praising this stanza:
“That’s good. You know, the rest of it isn’t so good, but I kept it for that, and I kept it because it was the first poem I ever sold.”
I’ll have more on this tomorrow and in the coming days – including some intriguing information about Frost’s own personal library of books; take a look at this:
“What remains of his collection of Dickinson books is available at New York University at the Fales Library. But neither Poems (1890) nor Poems, Second Series (1891) is there.”
We know that Frost owned them -- so what happened to them? Stay tuned!
At the 1:03:13 mark, Jarrell offers the following observation of Frost’s poetry in A Boy’s Will:
“It’s queer reading A Boy’s Will to find so many things quite like you, but then to find all the regular poetic inversions, and poetic license, and ’tis and o’er and the list and so on.”
Frost acknowledges these “poeticisms,” indicting “My Butterfly” as the worst offender, though he also clearly feels the poem offers a glimpse of the poet he eventually became:
“Yeah, Yeah. See they gradually eliminated themselves. I never did it on purpose. I just got a little shy about using poeticisms. Ashamed of them a little. Felt a false feeling about them. And the first one that’s kept in here, the butterfly, is the worst, you see, in that respect. The butterfly one I only kept it for one passage in it…. You see the passage that I liked was just—this was very young, I was 17 see when I wrote this.”
He then reads from the second stanza of the poem and concludes by praising this stanza:
“That’s good. You know, the rest of it isn’t so good, but I kept it for that, and I kept it because it was the first poem I ever sold.”
I’ll have more on this tomorrow and in the coming days – including some intriguing information about Frost’s own personal library of books; take a look at this:
“What remains of his collection of Dickinson books is available at New York University at the Fales Library. But neither Poems (1890) nor Poems, Second Series (1891) is there.”
We know that Frost owned them -- so what happened to them? Stay tuned!
RSS Feed
