"A poem is best read in the light of all the other poems ever
written." So said Robert Frost in instructing readers on how to
achieve poetic literacy. George Monteiro's newest book follows that
dictum to enhance our understanding of Frost's most valuable poems
by demonstrating the ways in which they circulate among the
constellations of great poems and essays of the New England
Renaissance. Monteiro reads Frost's own poetry not against "all the
other poems ever written" but in the light of poems and essays by
his precursors, particularly Emerson, Thoreau, and Dickinson.
Familiar poems such as "Mending Wall," "After Apple-Picking,"
"Birches," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "The Road Not
Taken," and "Mowing," as well as lesser known poems such as "The
Draft Horse," "The Ax-Helve," "The Bonfire," "Dust of Snow," "A
Cabin in the Clearing," "The Cocoon," and "Pod of the Milkweed,"
are renewed by fresh and original readings that show why and how
these poems pay tribute to their distinguished sources. Frost's
insistence that Emerson and Thoreau were the giants of
nineteenth-century American letters is confirmed by the many poems,
variously influenced, that derive from them. His attitude toward
Emily Dickinson, however, was more complex and sometimes less
generous. In his twenties he molded his poetry after hers. But
later, after he joined the faculty of Amherst College, he found her
to be less a benefactor than a competitor. Monteiro tells a
two-stranded tale of attraction, imitation, and homage countered by
competition, denigration, and grudging acceptance of Dickinson's
greatness as a woman poet. In a daring move, he composes -- out of
Frost's own words and phrases -- the talk on Emily Dickinson that
Frost was never invited to give. In showing how Frost's work
converses with that of his predecessors, Monteiro gives us a new
Frost whose poetry is seen as the culmination of an intensely felt
New England literary experience.
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