In her article “Defining Poetry in the Twilight Interval: Frost, Dickinson, and the Critics,” Karen Kilcup contends that the passionate moments of Robert Frost’s first published poem, “My Butterfly,” “resonate with Dickinson’s ‘Wild Nights,” which had appeared only two years before.”
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“But,” states Kilcup, “instead of Dickinson’s ecstatic (if imagined) consummation, Frost’s poem represents loss: The opening line cites the eponymous protagonist’s ‘emulous fond flowers’ who have ‘none left to mourn thee in the fields.’”
Here’s some of Kilcup’s take on the two poems:
“(In Frost’s poem) the floral imagery rehearses contemporaneous standards for feminine poetry, as does the speaker’s emotional transparency. The tender narrator feels keenly the insect’s absence, so ‘long ago – It seems forever,’ when the butterfly expressed its ardor ‘With all thy dazzling other ones’”
In airy dalliance,
Precipitate in love,
Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above,
Like a limp rose-wreath in a fairy dance.
Unlike Dickinson’s speaker, who announces ‘Futile the winds / To a heart in port,’ Frost’s girlish narrator mourns how 'fate had made thee for the pleasure of the wind, / With those great careless wings.’ While Dickinson’s speaker has metaphorically furled her sail, Frost’s butterfly is doomed by its ‘careless’ abandonment, its wings’ openness to ‘that reckless zephyr’ that flings against his cheek ‘the wild touch of thy dye-dusty wing.’ Even as it dies (or is already dead?) the insect seduces the narrator, who speaks as ecstatically as Dickinson’s sharing her multiple exclamation points: Tempestuous and delicate love, buffeted by external forces, is easily ‘broken.’”
Of course, Kilcup’s full essay considers two related questions; 1) How did the late-nineteenth-century cultural and critical climate impact how Frost encountered Dickinson’s work? 2) How did his reactions – both to the critics and to the poems – help shape his own verse, and ultimately, American poetry? And in the discussion of these two poems, she did mention that Frost’s floral imagery “rehearses contemporaneous standards” – although the language and conventionality of the poem did surprise me.
Frost wrote the poem in 1894, during a time that Edward Blair Stedman later referred to as the “Twilight Interval” (1890 to 1912) to describe the end of the Victorian era and the rise of modernism in poetry; however, the language and form of Frost’s “My Butterfly” are definitely more Victorian than modern.
The various thys, thines, and thous – along with the didsts, wists and more – certainly do not reflect a kindred rascally spirit in language or form with Emily Dickinson – who penned her “lawless” poems at the height of the Victorian era.
Though Frost was reading – and admired – Dickinson at the time he wrote “My Butterfly,” he still stuck with convention.
Here’s some of Kilcup’s take on the two poems:
“(In Frost’s poem) the floral imagery rehearses contemporaneous standards for feminine poetry, as does the speaker’s emotional transparency. The tender narrator feels keenly the insect’s absence, so ‘long ago – It seems forever,’ when the butterfly expressed its ardor ‘With all thy dazzling other ones’”
In airy dalliance,
Precipitate in love,
Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above,
Like a limp rose-wreath in a fairy dance.
Unlike Dickinson’s speaker, who announces ‘Futile the winds / To a heart in port,’ Frost’s girlish narrator mourns how 'fate had made thee for the pleasure of the wind, / With those great careless wings.’ While Dickinson’s speaker has metaphorically furled her sail, Frost’s butterfly is doomed by its ‘careless’ abandonment, its wings’ openness to ‘that reckless zephyr’ that flings against his cheek ‘the wild touch of thy dye-dusty wing.’ Even as it dies (or is already dead?) the insect seduces the narrator, who speaks as ecstatically as Dickinson’s sharing her multiple exclamation points: Tempestuous and delicate love, buffeted by external forces, is easily ‘broken.’”
Of course, Kilcup’s full essay considers two related questions; 1) How did the late-nineteenth-century cultural and critical climate impact how Frost encountered Dickinson’s work? 2) How did his reactions – both to the critics and to the poems – help shape his own verse, and ultimately, American poetry? And in the discussion of these two poems, she did mention that Frost’s floral imagery “rehearses contemporaneous standards” – although the language and conventionality of the poem did surprise me.
Frost wrote the poem in 1894, during a time that Edward Blair Stedman later referred to as the “Twilight Interval” (1890 to 1912) to describe the end of the Victorian era and the rise of modernism in poetry; however, the language and form of Frost’s “My Butterfly” are definitely more Victorian than modern.
The various thys, thines, and thous – along with the didsts, wists and more – certainly do not reflect a kindred rascally spirit in language or form with Emily Dickinson – who penned her “lawless” poems at the height of the Victorian era.
Though Frost was reading – and admired – Dickinson at the time he wrote “My Butterfly,” he still stuck with convention.
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