Recycled Helium articles

Robert Frost was a humorist as well as a poet as readers will discover when reading his poems. He often wrote of mundane subjects familiar to all people but so worthless in value, to readers’ possible way of thinking, they would scarcely believe a poet would write a poem about such a lowly subject. Aren’t poems supposed to have worthy subject matter and not be about some silliness about a lodged bit of snow hidden away from the sun in the yard or garden?  Not if the poet happens to be Robert Frost.

What he had in mind when he wrote this poem is probably far different from what readers will make of the poem. Others won’t really care. They run the words through their own mind and deal with the ideas the come tumbling forth. They won’t need study guides to help them interpret what the poet is saying. They don’t want anything to get between them and the art the poetic words portray.

Observation is a key element in Frost’s poetry and so is analogy. In  A Patch of Old Snow it looks from a distance as a piece of paper has dodged the wind and is clinging to an old post but not so. Readers are alerted to that fact by his words that “I should have guessed . . .” but upon closer scrutiny he discovered it was a remnant left over from that last big snowfall that had covered the ground completely. It was possibly a large snowfall that lingered for almost two weeks and may have caused local damage and downed lines. In other words, lots can be read into a patch of old snow if one is not careful about where imagination flies when floods of memories crowd in. What is a worthier subject than that? Thinking of that dab of sooty snow can create all kinds of reactions from readers and Frost knew that.

In his first four lines of the two-stanza poem, he makes a statement: “There's a patch of old snow in a corner / That I should have guessed / was a blow-away paper the rain / Had brought to rest.” Still thinking about what he really meant when he first observed that dirty patch of snow that at first he mistook or said he could have mistaken  for a piece of paper the rain and not the snow had forced to cling to some anchor before getting blown clear away, one gets caught up in suspense. It’s downright poetic to assume, as Frost could have assumed readers would assume, that out of nothing important poetry comes into being.

Continuing, “It’s speckled with grime” begins his second line of description of the spot of snow that appears to be what it isn’t and forgetting all about the reality of what it is he continues on with this thread of thought: Small print overspread it, / The news of a day I've forgotten -/ If I ever read it.” Wow, in eight lines he created a fantasy that can be used any way readers want to use it. With this poem he’s throwing out to readers crumbs as if he’s feeding hungry birds after a snow has locked away their cupboards.

Readers will never again overlook those occasional snow fragments; instead they will be reminded of Robert Frost and his genius for creating newspapers out of snow instead of paper; for reminding readers that he too, like them are often wrong about what is seen and too is absent minded and sometimes forgetful. He tells also  that he does not fully read the daily paper because he can’t always agree to what is printed; that he can at will make something out of nothing for poetry’s sake and he wants them to know it’s okay to do so. It’s also okay to misread messages in poetry. After all, he didn’t know why he was  so enamored by that little dab of left over snow.

 In New England, it snows a lot. Snow, miles and miles of it piled up several feet high he knew well. Yet it took a little dab of lingering snow in a shady spot near a corner fence post to inspire him to create art. And that poem is a work of art and although it isn’t hanging in museums, it does have some sort of life in minds and souls of readers who absolutely love whatever Robert Frost wrote. If he bothered to give it the time of day, why shouldn’t they? A Patch of Old Snow, is an image that lingers in the minds of most people who know snow and how it often slowly melts. But unlike most people, he was so taken by the image he wrote a poem about it. That’s what the average reader of the poem will believe. But is that the whole story? No say critics.

Frost was kind but he could use words as if he were a butcher carving up hurtful criticism. In other words, he could answer his critics and give back as good or better than he was given:  According to http://www.gradesaver.com/the-poetry-of-robert-frost/study-guide/section134 the reason behind his writing the poem was to answer criticism by Ezra Pound of his writing style.