Robert Frost's "Directive"

• I have enrolled in a form class. I think, as a general rule of thumb, my poems are too rowdy. Not very disciplined. Kind of like my mind. The things I write about, tend to find their own forms, rather than stay within the norms of the forms. But isn't that the thing about forms? But, I still think, it's good to try to write in forms. Like, this week, we are doing "blank verse." A form, which, admittedly leads itself to "imitation and reflection of thought." In other words, wordy! Now, this shouldn't scare me, the verbose person that I am. Except for the fact that all this wordiness needs to be expressed in iambic pentameter, in a fixed order of stressed and unstressed syllables. From what we read this week, I really liked Robert Frost's "Directive."
• Frost's poem, I think, is very much a pastoral and anti-pastoral at the same time. I was trying to read it in conjunction with Charlotte Smith's poem, where the nature has been personified, the narrator seems to be in perfect harmony with it. But in Frost's poem, “nature” and “human history” confront each other in a somewhat antagonistic relationship. The nature is beautiful in Frost's poem too, but it changes through human intervention. It is almost as if Frost feels compelled to use the same form in which pastoral poems were written to show that his concerns are very different. I think, that sentiment has been best expressed in the opening lines: “ Back out of all this now too much for us,/Back in a time made simple by the loss/Of detail burned, dissolved, and broken off/Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather.

• It seemed to me that in lots of places Frost is lapsing into hexameter. For me, what is meant was that, he was looking for a form, which needed to be a little bit hefty. As if his thoughts are struggling to fit themselves in lines, and even a pentameter is not always adequate for him.