“You have a writer’s name.”
My Creative Writing professor at Glasgow University was Professor Michael Schmidt. To be brutally honest, I don’t remember anything I wrote in his classes, probably because they took place first thing on a Friday morning when I would have been operating at about 7%. But I know I loved them.
Professor Schmidt was AMERICAN. It was the closest I ever got to being in Dawson’s Creek. He told me I had a writer‘s name on the first day of class so I obviously fawned and took to him immediately. The only other memory I have of those brutal 2009 mornings is Professor Schmidt’s story of when Robert Frost came to his elementary school to read his poetry.
And that did it. I loved Robert Frost from that moment. I told you I was fickle. (But this, at least, was a pretty noble interest.)
On my drive down from Portland to Boston on Wednesday, I took a detour to Derry, New Hampshire, the site of Robert Frost’s farm. The home itself is closed for the season but the grounds are open and I spent half an hour wandering around. It was just me, Frost’s words and all that history. I keep using the word “swoon” recently but...
I always liked this one best:
Desert Places
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it - it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less -
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
WIth no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars - on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places.