"The terrain of my poetry is the Derry landscape."-- Robert Frost

Robert Frost Farm, Derry, New Hampshire

Frost wrote: "Ït all started in Derry, the whole thing. . .  There was something about the experience at Derry which stayed in my mind, and was tapped for poetry in the years that came after."-- Frost to Louis Mertins.


I'm looking forward to attending the second annual Frost Farm Poetry Conference this weekend in Derry, New Hampshire.

I'm fortunate to be in Timothy Steele's master class in meter.

Below is a poem Robert Frost wrote while in Derry, "Hyla Brook".



Hyla Brook
Robert Frost

By June our brook’s run out of song and speed.
Sought for much after that, it will be found
Either to have gone groping underground
(And taken with it all the Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago,
Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)—
Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,
Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent
Even against the way its waters went.
Its bed is left a faded paper sheet
Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat—
A brook to none but who remember long.
This as it will be seen is other far
Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.
We love the things we love for what they are.

"There is a June"

Wind by Torsten Reuschling

Today's cool, windy weather reminded me of this poem by Emily Dickinson. Although technically it's not summer yet, on days like these it seems like it will never arrive!


930

There is a June when Corn is cut
And Roses in the Seed—
A Summer briefer than the first
But tenderer indeed

As should a Face supposed the Grave's
Emerge a single Noon
In the Vermilion that it wore
Affect us, and return—

Two Seasons, it is said, exist—
The Summer of the Just,
And this of Ours, diversified
With Prospect, and with Frost—

May not our Second with its First
So infinite compare
That We but recollect the one
The other to prefer?


-- Emily Dickinson