Reviews for Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays (Library of America)

The average rating for Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays (Library of America) based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-04-08 00:00:00 Jacky Pearson Despite metaphor's singular importance to literature and perception, few literary artists have consciously explored its hyperreal implications. Robert Frost is a rare exception. He frequently struggled with the implications of metaphor in his work, coming to an understanding "that all thinking...is metaphorical" and, thus, a simulation of reality (Frost 720). Indeed, Frost's preoccupation with metaphor and, subsequently, simulation make his poetry and prose important manifestations of literary hyperrealism. Not only does his work illustrate the replacement of the real with a poetic "operational double," it reveals the violence inherent in the process of simulation (Baudrillard 2). Reality is a state with which we cannot engage. The best we can do is simulate reality, creating an illusion of reality that is neither real nor unreal'but, rather, hyperreal. Jean Baudrillard expresses this process in his essay "The Precession of Simulacra:" It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all of the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes. (2) The fundamental mode of this substitution is metaphor -- the ultimate simulacrum. To generate "signs of the real" one must interpret the reality being simulated. The resulting interpretation or "sign" is immutably metaphorical, and, being such, it can only approximate the real, it can never actually be the real. Moreover, metaphor simulates perception; yet, nothing can ever be truly perceived because perception itself is necessarily metaphorical. Thus, perception, metaphor and literature can never engage with the real -- they are inextricably bound to the hyperreal. Poetry is one of the most explicit manifestations of hyperreality. Every stage of poetry is metaphorical. It is metaphorical in thought, concept, execution, and translation -- a perfect simulacrum. A poem is an "operational double" of reality, Baudrillard's "perfectly descriptive machine," that does not just represent the real, it replaces the real. Simulation, then, is not a benign act of representation; it is a violent act of replacement, which "suffices to render both [the real and the simulacrum:] artificial" (Baudrillard 9). Nowhere is this violence better illustrated than in "The Road Not Taken." Frost's most famous poem simulates the poet's experiences hiking in the woods with Edward Thomas and, ultimately, replaces them. Frost reputedly revealed Edward Thomas as the inspiration for his poem in a letter to Louis Untermeyer: "He...said that it was really about his friend Edward Thomas, who when they walked together always castigated himself for not having taken another path than the one they took" (128). Clearly, "The Road Not Taken" is based on an actual occurrence. Yet, from the moment the original event occurs, the experience can only be recalled through simulation and, once the experience is simulated, reality is supplanted by hyperreality. Like the dopplegänger of myth, simulation strips the real of its primacy and replaces the real with its hyperreal self. Hence, even Thomas' personal castigation "for not having taken another path" is inevitably superseded by the traditional reading of "The Road Not Taken," which figures Frost's poem as a meditation on the narrator's "profound awareness of the complexity of choice" (Johannes Kjørven 58). The simulation replaces Thomas' actual reaction with the narrator's hyperreal aggrandizement of the choice made: I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I' I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. (16-20) Edward Thomas supposedly reprimanded himself for "not having taken another path," but the narrator of "The Road Not Taken" considers the choice before he makes it, then rationalizes his choice into one "that has made all the difference." Thomas' ephemeral emotional response is nowhere to be found. It is dispelled and replaced by the very simulation it inspired -- just as is Thomas' reality. Indeed, only the most fervent biographers and scholars know that an actual event inspired "The Road Not Taken"; yet, their primary concern, as with every reader of Frost's poetry, is the simulation rather than the event. If the actual event is thought of at all it is secondary to the simulation it inspired. There is still another step in simulation's aggression, however. Once an "operational double" replaces reality it must also precede it. As Baudrillard says, "the territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is...the map that precedes the territory -- precession of simulacra" (1). Thomas' own engagement with "The Road Not Taken" exemplifies this precession: "Thomas failed to understand it as a poem about himself; but insisted...to Frost that 'I doubt if you can get anybody to see the fun of the thing without showing them and advising them which kind of laugh they are to turn on'" (William Pritchard 128). Here, the precession of the "operational double" is exposed by Thomas' concern with the poem and its potential audience rather than the event. Although he might retain the stimuli of the original walk to add to his interpretation, he is engaging with and interpreting only the model -- the real is inaccessible. Moreover, he displays a preoccupation with the audience's reaction to "The Road Not Taken" that is indifferent to their knowledge of the actual events. Indeed, the audience's understanding of Frost's "fun" is more important to Thomas than their understanding of his role as inspiration. All concerns with reality, therefore, are usurped by the words of the poem, conjuring myriad images and interpretations in the minds of every participant, both readers and walkers alike, making even the original moment nothing more than an interpretation. In fact, it no longer matters what the "real" wood or paths look like. Their simulation in "The Road Not Taken" replaces "reality" with a "metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that...short circuits all of [reality's:] vicissitudes:" Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. (Frost 6-12) In the hyperreality of Frost's poem, the woods are always "yellow," the "leaves" never shift on the forest floor, and the paths themselves are forever "worn about the same" (1). No subtle change of stimuli can ever occur. While a stimulus in a simulation can be interpreted differently, no subtle shift of a body's position, nor any change of light '- the vicissitudes of reality -- can ever actually alter the stimuli. Instead, a state of metastability is achieved where the setting can only be interpreted through unchanging stimuli; thus, each interpretation only increases the stability of the poem's metaphors. Thomas' recollection of the actual event, then, is unavoidably informed and replaced by the "perfectly descriptive machine" of Frost's poem. Yet, potent displays of hyperrealism in Frost's poetry are not isolated to "The Road Not Taken." In some cases, Frost actually confronts Baudrillard's post-structuralism head on, conjuring metaphors that deal directly with the impossibility of reality. "For Once, Then, Something" is inescapably hyperreal, consciously illustrating the process of simulation and the untouchable reality it invariably supplants: Once, when trying with chin against a well curb, I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture, Through the picture, a something white, uncertain, Something more of the depths'-and then lost it. Water came to rebuke the too clear water... (7-11) The "picture" in the water is a reflection of the narrator and his world. It is a mirror image that simulates "Me myself in the summer heaven godlike / Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs" (5-6). Simulation, once again, reveals hyperreality through an "operational double"'-the narrator's reflection-'which usurps the reality of the model by being "not exactly like it, [but:] a bit more exact. There is never similitude, any more than there is exactitude. What is exact is already too exact" (Baudrillard 107). Indeed, the simulation is both more and less than the model. The narrator is represented and replaced by a simulation, but the simulation also reflects a narrator that does not and cannot exist outside the reflection. After all, visual perception of the self is non-existent without simulation and, even then, "nothing resembles itself,...like all fantasies of the exact synthesis or resurrection of the real, [the reflection:] is already no longer real, [it:] is already hyperreal" (Baudrillard 108). Thus, the reality of the narrator's imagined identity, like Lacan's "imaginary identity at the 'mirror stage' of development," disappears into the hyperreality of its "operational double" (Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan 123). The hyperreal "picture" of the narrator's reflection, however, obfuscates more than the reality of his identity. There is "something white, uncertain" hidden in the "depths" of the well, and Frost uses it to illustrate the total inaccessibility of reality: Water came to rebuke the too clear water. One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, Blurred it, blotted it out. (11-14) Situating this "something white, uncertain" as the real, Frost subverts reality by showing that it can only be hinted at: "What was that whiteness? Truth? A pebble of quartz?" Ultimately, its reality cannot be known. The state of "something white" is uncertain. It can only be seen through a lens of "too clear water," water that is "not exactly like [water:]," water that is "already too exact," water that is "already hyperreal." Thus, when a drop of water sends out "a ripple" that obscures "something white" it is not an imposition of hyperreality, it is merely a reinforcement of the natural state of hyperreality that is already in place. Every perception and every shift in perception, every metaphor and every alteration in metaphor is a simulation; therefore, the "something white" can never be perceived in a state of reality because the act of interpretation insures that it is already an "operational double"-'the simulation must precede and usurp reality. Frost's fascination with the simulation of thought and metaphor appears again in his poem "Directive." From beginning to end, it is a paragon of simulation. Consider the opening lines of the poem, which reveal "Directive's" shift to a past "time" of hyperreality: "Back out of all this now too much for us / Back in a time made simple by the loss / Of detail..." (1-3). Here, the narrator expresses the need to escape from one state into another, to enter "a time made simple;" yet, to do so is to enter into a hyperreality he deliberately generates. Indeed, this new "time" is merely a simulation of his own imaginings. Hence, it cannot have any reality of its own. This then raises the question: is the narrator leaving behind the real for the hyperreal? The answer is certainly not. Instead, the "all of this now too much for us," which the narrator seemingly rejects in favor of "a time made simple," is itself hyperreal. As Baudrillard says, "to simulate is to feign to have what one doesn't have" and this is precisely how the narrator simulates the "all of this now too much for us" (3). It is situated as an alternative to "a time made simple." Neither alternative, however, is his to reject or supplant because the simulacra of the narrator's fancy are manifested in the "operational double" of a poem, which is beyond ownership. Moreover, the seemingly opposite alternatives embody the two villages that the narrator later describes as having "...faded / Into each other;" therefore, they are already inextricably bound together in the same simulation, comprising one hyperreality (34-35). Thus, no reality can be left behind. The hyperreality of "Directive" is further compounded by an increase in the sources of simulation. Unlike "The Road Not Taken" and "For Once, Then, Something," it is not just the narrator's perceptions and simulacra that need to be dealt with: The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you, Who only has at heart your getting lost, May seem as if it should have been a quarry' Great monolithic knees the former town Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered. (8-12) Although the "guide" is an element of the narrator's hyperreality, he is more than a simulacrum. He is a potentially active participant capable of summoning his own simulacra. The "guide" conjures the metaphor of the quarry's "Great monolithic knees" and it is his misdirection that leads the reader down the "lost" road. Thus, the narrator's power to simulate is momentarily usurped by the "guide," who creates a simulacrum within a simulacrum. In addition, the narrator explicitly invites the reader to participate in the act of simulation, thereby pushing "Directive" even deeper into hyperreality: "Make yourself up a cheering song of how / Someone's road home from work this once was" (29-30). The reader is directed to create "operational doubles" of the road, the people and their employment'-to substitute "the signs of the real for the real"-'to create a hyperreality in which one can become "lost enough to find [one:]self" (Frost 36). Therefore, the narrator implicates both the reader and the "guide" in the process of simulation, assuring that three manifestations of hyperreality, rather than one, must be considered within "Directive." For all "Directive's" complexity, however, the most plentiful evidence of its hyperrealism is the abundance of straightforward simulacra. "There is a house that is no more a house / Upon a farm that is no more a farm / And in a town that is no more a town" (Frost 5-7). Even though they are "no more," the house, the farm and the town clearly exist. How do they exist? As simulacra conjured by the narrator. Moreover, the "Glacier," the "pecker fretted apple trees," "the children's house of make believe," and the "drinking goblet like the Grail" are all simulations, manifestations of hyperreality that blur "any distinction between the real and the imaginary" (Frost 16, 28, 41, 57 / Baudrillard 3). In "Directive," like much of Frost's poetry, simulations abound-'and where there are simulations, there must be hyperreality. "We don't write poetry about the world, the world is poetry." People, senses, light, the most basic sensory experiences, are texts that we perceive and interpret through metaphor. All thinking, all feeling, all sensing, indeed all consciousness is necessarily metaphorical and, thus, hyperreal. Poetry, films, short stories, novels, music, all the arts, are simulations of our hyperreal state. Frost may have lacked the post-structural language necessary to name this revelation when he created his poetry, yet he was undoubtedly not an unwitting practitioner of simulation: "I have wanted in late years to go further and further in making metaphor the whole of thinking. I find someone now and then to agree with me that all thinking...is metaphorical" (Frost 720). If Frost had lived a little longer he would have found more than a few to agree with him. Metaphor, perception, simulation. Call it what we will it cannot be reality. Our state of being is hyperreal and Frost intuited this in his poetry. He was a post-structuralist when his contemporaries were still exploring post-modernism. He was a poet ahead of his time. WORKS CITED Baudrillard, Jean. "The Precession of Simulacra." Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1994. 1-42. Frost, Robert. Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc, 1995 Kjørven, Johannes. Robert Frost's Emergent Design: The Truth of the Self In-between Belief and Unbelief . Oslo: Solum Forlag A/S, 1987. Pritchard, William H. Frost: a literary life reconsidered. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1984. Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael. "Strangers to Ourselves." Literary Theory: an anthology. eds. Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers Inc, 1998.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-06-16 00:00:00 Gregg Koslan Frost have a very unique collection of poems that provide the readers with advice.