Reflections on Frostiana

Fall of 1960 found me as a new college student in Iowa making friends, hustling to my new classes, finding my way around campus and Cedar Falls, Iowa at Iowa State Teachers College. Torn between majoring in music and in English, I had settled on English because I was afraid that learning how to analyze music would ruin my love for it. Singing had already long been a passion and passing an audition into the “premiere” chorale was so exciting.  

I was taking voice lessons from the choir director who was known in choral circles around the country. As the leaves turned red and yellow, a new beau and I walked down to the Cedar River to stroll through the woodsy area. The crisp air inspired a quick walk as we found paths and rustled on one and another until we had to hurry back for our chorale rehearsal.

We settled in our seats smelling of fresh wood smoke and glad for the warmth of the room and new singing friends. Our Music Director shared with us that we would be doing a new work by Randall Thompson which set some of Robert Frost’s poetry to  music and named Frostiana. It had premiered only about a year before.  I was overjoyed as I loved many of Frost’s poems and in high school we had sung Thompson’s Alleluia.  As we read through the piece “The Road Not Taken,” I could not help thinking about our recent walk.

After rehearsal, I curled up in a chair in the dorm lounge and read and re-read the poetry we had just sung. We had stood before some diverging paths on our walk and spoken about which way we should go.  Frost also puzzled about where each path might lead. I remember thinking about how we decide which path to choose.  One might lead down to the river, another deeper into the woods, another back to town, another out into the countryside. My thinking was pretty much on the surface and not going much under the surface of the rustling leaves.

The same was true with “The Pasture.”  I spent the summers on my Grandmother’s farm. I helped milk cows, feed pigs, and go out to the pasture to bring the cows to be milked.  In spring baby calfs were born, sometimes in the pasture and needed protection from the elements and predators.  I was transported to those days on the farm seeing and helping the mother cows caring for her baby.

My early views of “The Telephone,” “A Girl’s Garden” and “Choose Something Like a Star” were pretty straightforward and literal. I pictured a shy guy calling a girl on the dorm phone in the hallway, and trying to get a conversation going. I don’t remember anything about “Choose Something Like a Star.”  I think it completely eluded me.

I was certainly aware that the addition of the music to the poetry heightened its appeal.

Now, 60 years later with so much Life behind me, I have had a new look at these and other poems and realize there is so much more depth and metaphoric language. A better understanding of how music works also,adds another important and more meaningful dimension. 

“The Pasture” scene could be seen as seductive in the “you come too,” for example. After a life of interest in observing politics, I could imagine “A Girl’s Garden” being a metaphor for a town or a city and all the attempts at governance and handling the villagers who want to be heard. After hearing a discussion, I can see that “Choose Something Like a Star” is about Frost’s frustrations with the poetry of his contemporaries.  He even names Keats. I have to admit it is still a bit obtuse to  me.

Life throws so many choices and problems and joys and regrets at us that one can see why “The Road Not Taken” is one of Frost’s favored poems. Looking back I can see freeways, and dirt or gravel roads, city streets, and dirt paths along the river. Now we have GPS to guide us and multifunctional cellphones that make the one in the dorm hallway obsolete. 

Life has so many dimensions after the arrival of children, the death of a partner and incidents that require us to step back and review the paths we have taken. I wonder what Frost would think now.

— Loydene Keith, SD Master Chorale Alto