Ghost Buffalo

The second volume of the Robert Frost Letters is out, and I've busted my budget to get my hands on a copy.  The first volume was lengthy and rich, and clearly only the tip of the trail.  A couple of fragments, from WH Pritchard's review (from the Fall, 2016 issue -- am catching up on my reading), Hopkins Review: I was determined to have it out with my youngers and betters as to what thinking really was. We reached an agreement that most of what they had regarded as thinking, their own and other people's, was nothing but voting -- taking sides on an issue they had nothing to do with laying down. Frost sets himself against "clash" in the classroom; debating and disagreeing was well enough for coming lawyers, politicians and theologians, ...but I should think there must be a whole realm or plane above that -- all sight and insight, perception, intuition, rapture ...Having ideas that are neither pro nor con.  The differences that make controversy become only t

A horse made of driftwood walked into my dreams the other night. Soon after, an old poet appeared, riding the back of a turkey buzzard.  The elk in the road turned into a moose.  Italy paused, having lost her boot.  There were no words, but there was some sort of curtain, and some sort of curtain parting.   I woke feeling a little like Brando.  I coulda been a Krishna.   Meanwhile, after long thought, (and suddenly off the cuff), one comes to realize the lyric poem is not enough.   One has to wonder if language itself aches to escape itself.  I suspect it does.  In the wake of the boat, the row.  In the throes of the boat, the rumor of autumn.  Floods, fires, and refugees, sun, moon, and Weldon Kees.   It's when  going upstairs, not down, I tend to trip, or stumble.  Up, down, back and forth. Mumble, mumble, mumble.  My kingdom for a (deep, dark, and absolutely clear) truffle.