Poetry Sunday 13 April 2014

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Putting in the Seed
Robert Frost (1920)

You come to fetch me from my work to-night
When supper’s on the table, and we’ll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree.
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;)
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

Comments by Ira Maine, Poetry Editor

The difficulty with Robert Frost is his reputation. He won endless awards for his work in his lifetime (1874-1963) and so people, lesser people, are driven to write endless pseudo-intellectual hoo-hah about the poor man.

Most people I’ve read seem thrillingly, almost pruriently to discover sexuality in this poem. Like a bunch of gossipers with nothing better to do they blurt on endlessly, pointlessly about the hidden(though naked) sexuality in this poem.. God give me strength…

The bloke is doing a bit of Springtime gardening, turning the soil ‘…burying the white soft petals…’  (apple tree petals) which will help fertilize the ‘…smooth bean and wrinkled pea…’ which he is about to sow.. He is so intent on what he is doing that his wife has to come and fetch him home for supper. He stops digging and goes away with her in case she becomes infected, like him, with the ‘…Springtime passion for the earth…’

In the end, Frost attempts in words, to capture the miracle, the astonishing chemistry that occurs between the seed and the earth., and he tries too,to capture how keenly, and lovingly we watch for that ‘..early birth…’ when ‘…the arched body…’ of the seedling comes thrusting blindly out of the earth .

Of course there’s the creative process involved here, but it is surely and primarily a sensual process,involving the Spring, the earth,, involving natural, creative, magical forces rather than some idiot sniggering ‘sexuality’.

This is a lovely poem and will survive long after the idiots have run out of ink.