In junior high, we read and watched The Outsiders. I don't remember the book at all, but of course, I'll always remember the movie, chock-full of 80s heart-throbs. I was 13, and I had already begun an intense love-affair with reading. I couldn't understand why all the other kids would sigh and groan when it was time to talk book reports. I read whatever our dinky little Catholic school library could provide. Jack London was a favorite. But it wasn't until I watched The Outsiders that I fell in love with poetry. And this is why:
Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
After hearing Ponyboy recite this poem, I was mesmerized. Where can I find this poem? Where can I read more poems like it? The sound was so beautiful. And the meaning, so poignant.
Many years later, Robert Frost still has a very special, tender spot in my poet heart. My Maya Angelou obsession happened around the same time, but it was a different kind of love. I loved her for her urgency and social commentary. I loved Frost for bringing beauty in to the world in a way no one else could. Here is my favorite Frost poem:
The Oven Bird
by Robert Frost
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
He may have his critics, and so what? Frost is timeless, yet classic. A master of language and a peddler of emotion. I love you, Mr. Frost. Happy Birthday.
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