Robert Frost argued that poetry is central to an education. Thinking is learning to manage metaphors, and that’s best learned by reading poetry, he said.
He also said that the student of poetry will learn about belief. There are several species. Love-belief is belief in someone else. The relationship between lover and beloved is believed into something real.
That line is enlightening to me. A lot of love poetry has a peculiar sense of yearning. The poet wants something to be true or real and is writing as if it were. Regardless of how the poem is written, I tend to hear it in the subjunctive.
Frost’s take on self-belief is fascinating. He says that when a person is young, he knows more about himself than he can prove. His knowledge isn’t accepted by other people, especially adults. The young person believes that self into existence.
I’m not a teacher, but if I were, I’d want to talk about Frost.
• Sources: Frost’s essay “Education by Poetry” is in The Collected Prose of Robert Frost, edited by Mark Richardson; Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard, 2007. The parts of his essay discussed here on are on pp. 109-10.
For an earlier note on this essay, see Frost: ‘Education by Poetry,’ June 5, 2024. It’s here:
https://hebertaylor.blogspot.com/2024/06/frost-education-by-poetry.html
No comments:
Post a Comment