It’s Wonderful Words Wednesday at the River Houses, and since Monday was Robert Frost’s birthday, we’re going to make this into a Robert Frost week!
Robert Frost (1874–1963) is an excellent poet to read with young people because his writing is often simple and accessible on the surface (and so easy for beginners), while remaining complex and philosophical underneath (and so rewarding for more advanced readers).
Why not read this little gem to your students this week — or have them read it to you — and discuss its structure and ideas. It’s about a farm that was taken over by urban development: the once-isolated farmhouse is now surrounded by new construction, and the brook that was once beside it is now buried in a pipe. But is it really gone? (Could there be a brook like this near you?)
A Brook in the City
Robert Frost
The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square
With the new city street it has to wear
A number in. But what about the brook
That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength
And impulse, having dipped a finger length
And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed
A flower to try its currents where they crossed.
The meadow grass could be cemented down
From growing under pavements of a town;
The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.
Is water wood to serve a brook the same?
How else dispose of an immortal force
No longer needed? Staunch it at its source
With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown
Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone
In fetid darkness still to live and run —
And all for nothing it had ever done
Except forget to go in fear perhaps.
No one would know except for ancient maps
That such a brook ran water. But I wonder
If from its being kept forever under,
The thoughts may not have risen that so keep
This new-built city from both work and sleep.
❡ Count and map: When you introduce your students to a new poem, especially one in a traditional form, don’t start with abstract meaning or symbolism; the first thing to do is just count the syllables and map the rhyme scheme. How many syllables in each line in this poem? Ten throughout — a perfect pattern. What about the rhyme scheme? Each pair of lines rhymes — they are couplets — so we would describe the rhyme scheme as AABBCCDD, etc. Uncovering these structural details teaches your students that a poem of this kind is not the result of some sort of spontaneous imaginative outburst on the part of the poet; it is instead an intricately crafted piece of literary labor.
What wonderful words have you found and what literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately?
❡ Explore more: The American Literature website (americanliterature.com) includes biographies and examples of the work of many major poets, including Robert Frost, suitable for homeschool students and teachers.
