(HOST) Two poets with Vermont roots were celebrated in Vermont last weekend. Commentator Tom Slayton attended both – and has these observations.
(SLAYTON) Robert Frost once asked, in a voice dripping with irony, why anyone would bother to read poetry at all, when there’s what he called "good honest prose" to read. But he knew, of course, there are many reasons why poetry must be read – and written. After all, he wrote more than 500 pages of it himself!
And Frost, sly trickster that he could be, liked nothing better than to ask a question when he had a good answer ready.
In any case, there’s lots of evidence that poetry is still being read in Vermont. In fact, this past weekend was almost an unofficial poetry-appreciation weekend: there were two events that celebrated two important poets with strong ties to Vermont – and plenty of people turned out for both of them.
One was a two-day conference, sponsored by the Vermont Council on the Humanities, devoted to the works of Robert Frost. The other was a memorial celebration of the poetry and life of Hayden Carruth.
Frost, as nearly everyone knows, was the most popular poet of the mid-20th century, and many of his poems have come to virtually define rural New England. Carruth, though less well known, is nonetheless an important poet, a master craftsman, who captured working-class northern Vermont in his poetry about as well as it has ever been captured. Carruth was deeply respected and admired by his fellow poets in Vermont and elsewhere.
And so, for that matter, is Frost nowadays. For a time, Robert Frost was all but sneered at by many modern poets, probably because he committed the unforgivable sin of being popular and accessible, but also because he hewed to traditional poetic forms, which were out of fashion with many poets and scholars in the late 20th century.
But at the Frost Conference in Middlebury this past weekend, it was evident that Frost’s reputation has been reassessed. The subtleties and complexities of his poems were probed in speeches and workshops. He was referred to by scholars as "…one of the two or three best poets on the planet in the last 100 years," and was cited – along with Shakespeare, Milton, and Browning – as one of the greatest writers of blank verse of all time.
Carruth, a different poet with a more direct, rougher voice, was, like Frost, both deeply learned and subtle. And he paid his tribute to traditional forms as well.
Hayden Carruth died a few weeks ago, at the age of 87, and his life and work were celebrated at a memorial service in Montpelier that featured readings of his poetry by a dozen important Vermont poets, including Galway Kinnell, Ellen Bryant Voigt, and David Budbill. It felt like a gathering of the tribe – the poetry tribe.
As the many voices that Carruth’s poetry assumed were read, we heard his love of jazz, his affection for the rugged landscape and rugged people of Lamoille County, his deep erudition and his beautiful, precise words sparkle in the afternoon air.
And I felt again how fortunate we are to live in a place that inspires, through great poetry, such brilliance, such wisdom, such beauty.