TOP25-DES23
This Old Poem #25:
Robert Frost’s Birches
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 9/25/02

  1 of the great errors artists & critics make is conflating their ‘likes & dislikes’ for objective criteria regarding a work of art. That is, too often they will give a thumbs up to crap simply because it appeals to their political, personal, religious, or aesthetic beliefs. Whether it is well-done is irrelevant, because they ‘like’ it, or the attempt. Often this conflation occurs in pop art- especially film. People like the crap of a Steven Spielberg, so cliché-ridden & stereotype-laden crap like Saving Private Ryan & Schindler’s List gets praised, even though any 16 year old could have penned it. Or, films like Forrest Gump (about a retard), or Philadelphia (did you know bigotry is bad? especially when perpetrated by black bigots?) get over-the-top praise, despite being palpably thin in story. Then there are critics who love or hate everything an artist does- without any discernment of often great artistic heights between the works of art. Woody Allen has had notorious boosters (who praise his lamer early & recent films) & dogged detractors (who damn even his unassailably brilliant late 70s-early 90s period).
  We are all guilty of such biases- even me. The difference is I fundamentally recognize this. When I watch cheesy soap operas, Godzilla films, or pro wrestling, I take them for what they are. I do not try to justify them as higher arts. Similarly, there are artists & poets I dislike, aesthetically, but have to admit are pretty damned good overall. Robert Frost is 1 of those. He has a dozen or so brilliant dialogue poems, a few dozen good-great anthology pieces (including the titular poem), & 1 supreme example of great- nay, divine- poetry: Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening. But generally I dislike his technically sound poetry. It’s a combination of the bada-boom Catskills comedian factor (that is, his poems are well-wrought, but often predictable in their narratives & homiletics), & what poet-critic Randall Jarrell infamously termed the other Frost (TOF). I use the modifier infamous because ever since RJ’s 1950s championing of TOF every 2-bit critic has seen fit to weave in all sorts of ridiculous connotations into RF’s poems, & justify it with RJ’s thesis. The truth is RF was a very technically solid, but often banal poet- often due to extended prolixity &/or preciousness. He’s in the pantheon, for sure, but he’s not as good as his supporters say. Still, he’s got a # of poems any poet (including me) would love to have written.
  That said let’s turn to the poem in question, then I’ll grieve a bit, rewrite, & let you decide the poem’s (& rewrite’s) worth.

Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

  Right away we see that this is a good poem, with solid blankly versed music- but it has some glaring, typically Frostian weaknesses- namely it’s too wordy. Frost may have reveled in being a champion of plainspeak- but this poem makes you wanna say, ‘Shut up & get to the point already. Instead of pointing out bit-by-bit what is excess let me do a side-by-side for easier comparison. In the rewrite I cut this 59 line poem down to 34, lose nothing narratively, & also heighten some things that add to the overall ‘poetry’ of the piece.

Birches (FROST)

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Birches (TOP)

When I see birches bend to left and right
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust.  
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

  Let’s see what’s gone & why. Line 2’s straighter & darker adjectives may be Frostian fixtures, but they do not enhance this poem- perhaps in a poem on a Victory Garden, but not birches. The lines ‘As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured/As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.’ are also redundant in describing the falling ice from the trees, when ‘After a rain. They click upon themselves’ says it so well. Ditto, even more so, for ‘Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away/You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen./They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,/And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed/So low for long, they never right themselves:’. & there really is no need for such dramatic personification as ‘But I was going to say when Truth broke in/With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm’ when the speaker’s remembrance more than satisfies. This is just typical artistic gizzing. The poet is ‘on a roll’ & feels no need to prune back because he/she likes what is being done so much that to trim seems sacreligious to ‘the moment’. Similarly the passage ‘One by one he subdued his father's trees/By riding them down over and over again/Until he took the stiffness out of them,/And not one but hung limp, not one was left/For him to conquer. He learned all there was/To learn about not launching out too soon/And so not carrying the tree away/Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise’ weakens the narrative- especially the phrase ‘could play alone’. By going on & on the power of that idea (not new, but in context very jarring at this point in the poem) is undercut. RF must tell us rather than letting the idea show us. Going straight to  ‘To the top branches....’ we get a very show moment- the boy is sucking it up & becoming a man. In the original RF is self-consciously going for the explication of what most readers (male or female) already know. Ditto (again) for ‘It's when I'm weary of considerations,/And life is too much like a pathless wood/Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs/Broken across it, and one eye is weeping/From a twig's having lashed across it open.’ This is just bad writing- dramatically, not technically. It’s cringe-inducing mawk. ‘May no fate wilfully misunderstand me/And half grant what I wish and snatch me away’ is just more telling, not showing.
  I challenge you, take the rewrite & original versions, print them up, & show the rewrite to 10 people you know to read. Ask them what they think of the poem, what the basic storyline is, etc. Then let’em read the original & ask them the same questions. They will give you the same answers. The point is that nothing is gained by the 25 extra lines in the original. But something is gained in the concision. The phrase ‘Not to return’, in the original, is merely an addendum to the idea of being snatched away- but in the rewrite it is both a clarifier & a comment on the preceding lines: ‘I'd like to get away from earth awhile/And then come back to it and begin over.’ This is the speaker aware of his plight & sharing it knowingly with the reader- a moment of communion absent from the original where RF just piles on & gilds the proverbial lily. He could do better, & did so in many of his classics. This is an overrated poem. The rewrite is a great poem, but the original is just a good poem with potential. In retrospect even RF would see that he could do better. After all, I’ve shown he did worse!

Final Score: (1-100):

Robert Frost’s Birches: 82
TOP’s Birches: 95

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