Frost
continues to be the compass by which many contemporary poets navigate.
Many, but not all, of these poems come to us as entries in the
annual Robert Frost
Award, whose guidelines
are published elsewhere on
this site.
Some poems, like
"Love and Free Verse"
by Gwen Hart, a first-book poet,
attempt to bridge the gap between formal and free verse.
Free verse is
playing tennis without the net,
driving all over the road, sending a muddy
dog onto the field wearing your helmet,
cartwheeling down a hill of poppies, cutting
school. And what’s love without dissonance?
Hart's poem poses a good
question for readers of Frost-- especially in the way it recognizes the
dissonance that marks many great Frost poems.
Other poems, like those of Russian-born Philip
Nikolayev, make
bridges from Frost's forms into new ones. Good bridges make
good neighbors, too.
Still other contemporary
poems romp and revel in the settings that Frost used and these poems
have made
them available to different regions and accents
in ways that Frost himself would recognize. Some of these
continue the essential dialogue that American poems love to have with
nature.
One poem, from Helen
Sewell Johnson, is an actual Frost sighting. Other poems (Linda
Dove) offer ways not only to remember Robert
Frost but also to listen to familiar sounds and even breathing
places to
sense
what comes from this knowing—
a language of numbers and one
of words.
-- Mark Schorr
Preface copyright
2005 Mark Schorr
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