Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel with the World Page #4

to recheck my father's coffin

with me and my sister.

I was 12 years old.

And I carried other people around

that couldn't stand up...

when they were so grieved.

So there, I guess

that's how I brought life.

[ Growling, Barking ]

[ Dog Barks, Growls ]

[Frost Continues ] And I did

everything I had to do to get by.

Money, a little bit, you know,

working at this and that.

I worked on newspapers a little.

I didn't do very well.

I wasn't a very good reporter.

I was too shy.

I gravitated to the editorial page.

[ Chuckles ]

And we had a farm...

Where I could partly earn a living.

Didn't do it very well.

And I never was away from the farm

in the evening.

More than three years I think it was,

probably it was.

I think once I came home

as late as 8:
00.

We never Went to church.

We never Went to movies.

Never Went to anything.

And there was nothing

we were missing.

We were having a very nice time.

A nice little farm.

And children.

They had orchards and fruit...

and horse and cow and all that.

I only left it, drifted away from it...

for part-time teaching because

I wasn't quite earning a living.

And I think it came natural to do it.

My mother was a teacher...

and I drifted into it

for bread and butter...

and began teaching at a little

district school and things.

District school with 12 children.

I remember I had one that would

come and go in barefooted.

Come and go into my knee.

[Coughing]

I never got called a poet

till I was 40 or so.

And I always thought it was a praise

word that I couldn't use on myself.

It's a praise word.

You can write poetry, and I wrote it.

I don't know howl did it

and What would have happened...

if it hadn't come through

somewhere in the end.

My complete works are with me here.

Two books. A little new book

and a little old book.

And I think it adds up to about

maybe 700 pages in 70 years.

Ten pages a year, see.

Not many but still at it,

always about the same a year.

I don't calculate on it, but it turns

out to be about that much a year.

Probably twice that

I have thrown away.

And people ask

What poem you like best.

The poem I like best is one

somebodys just praised...

or the one Ive just written.

[ Frost Chuckles]

Or else I say you can't-

you don't like to tell

about your poems...

anymore than a mother does

about her children.

When she has five or six children...

she wouldn't tell you

which is her favorite.

She might have one...

maybe.

Maybe- She shouldnt.

She knows she shouldnt.

- [Audience Laughs]

- [ Frost Chuckles, Mutters]

I said to an audience the other day...

l-low many of you don't know...

'Stopping By Woods?

There was only one person

in 2,000 or 3,000 people...

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes