The Wisdom of Frost Exposed in The Oven Bird Essay

The Wisdom of Frost Exposed in The Oven Bird These seemingly negligible birds, symbols of the lyric voice, have intuited the Oven Birds lesson and are the signs by which one is meant to divine Frosts acceptance of the linguistic implications of the fall from innocence. The Oven Bird, who watching That other fall we name the fall come to cover the world with dust, Knows in singing not to sing. Instead, The question that he frames in all but words / Is what to make of a diminished thing. The fall, in necessitating both birth and death, imposes a continuum of identity that compromises naming. The process toward death, begun with birth, transmutes and gradually diminishes form, thus adding to the equation - words are†¦show more content†¦The paradox of the Oven Birds assertive voice completes the suggestion that only a new language can accommodate the diminishing of things, for he neither sings nor speaks: he knows in singing not to sing and he frames his question in all but words. He neither sinks nor soars, and he lives in a solid, domed house that typifies his Yankee ingenuity, his forethought, his prudence. In a voice of virile moderation, loud but unhysterical, he sets out to articulate his surroundings. But at the same time, and in a way that refuses to cancel out this message, Frost obliquely mocks his meager lyric birds and the compromised, oven-bird speakers throughout his poetry who are equally pinioned, held by their own voices from transcendence. He is ironically and ambivalently aware of the Palgravian definition of lyric poetry. (Lentricchia sums it up: No narrative allowed, no description of local reference, no didacticism, no personal, occasional, or religious material, no humor - the very antithesis of the poetical - no dramatic textures of blank verse because the speaking voice is alien to song lyric, etc.) And Frost is very much dedicated to deconstructing this mode with his own lyricism: he writes to Amy Lowell: The great thing is that you and some of the rest of us have landed with both feet on all the little chipping poetry of a while ago. We have busted em up as with cavalry. We have, we have, we have. YetShow MoreRelatedDeveloping Management Skills404131 Words    |  1617 Pagesbasic human skills still lie at the heart of effective human interaction. In fact, human relationships are becoming more important, not less, as the information age unfolds and technologies encroach even more upon our daily lives. Most of us are exposed to more information each day than we can possibly pay attention to. More than 6,000 business books are published each month. Moreover, no mechanism exists to organize, prioritize, or interpret that information, so it is often unclear what is crucialRead MoreCrossing the Chasm76808 Words   |  308 PagesRosemary Remade, Page Alloo, Karen Kang, Karen Lippe, Greg Ruff, Chris xiv Acknowledgments xv Halliwell, Patty Burke, Joan Naidish, Sharon Colby, and Patrick Corman. Other colleagues who have since moved on to other ventures also provided wisdom, examples, and support. These include Jennifer Jones, Lee James, Lynn Amato, Bob Pearson, Mary Jane Reiter, Nancy Blake, Wendy Grubow, Jean Murphy, John Fess, Kathy Lockton, Andy Rothman, Rick Redding, Jennifer Little, and Wink Grellis. Then there