Frost, Politics and Language
Does the piece have a title? What does the title suggest about the language?
The title, “A Roadside Stand,” conjures up for me the many “lean-tos” on the gravel aproning the New Hampshire’s back roads -- the one on Rte. 140 between Meredith and New Hampton selling quarts of strawberries in June, cucumbers in July, corn and blueberries in August, chicken eggs all year round -- or the one at the top of Zion Hill or March Road in Tilton and Northfield, both selling zucchini and summer squash. These signs spell “zucchini” the way Webster’s spells it. So, given this conjuring, I imagine I will read a poem about a quaint little New England roadside stand, next to a quaint little roadside house. It is not until I read into the poem that I begin to hear another meaning of “stand” as in “taking a stand on a political or religious ideal.” By the time I finish the piece I hear the second louder than I see the first.
2. Who is the speaker of the piece? What do we know about him or her? Does the speaker reflect on the experience with a particular attitude (tone)? Is there an identified auditor, a “you” in the poem to whom the language is being directed?
The speaker is a north country native, not a “flatlander,” older than I, who has observed carefully both his neighbors and flower of city-folk who vacation or weekend in the north of the New Hampshire Notches. The speaker is not kind to either group, hurt by the “trusting sorrow” of his north country neighbors who depend on/rely on/count on/beg for city money to make ends meet and the manipulative city folk who lull the country folk into giving up the land the have worked all their lives and moving their homes into town where they cannot sleep. In the end, the speaker both pites and empathizes his neighbors, for I imagine the thoughts that give rise to this poem also keep him up at night. At the end of the poem, the speaker directly addresses a “you,” and it’s unclear who this auditor might be -- maybe a dog, a spouse, a friend riding shotgun in a rusting F140, bouncing down a north country road.
3. What is the occasion which leads to the uttering of the language?
I imagine the speaker is driving down this country road in a battered pick-up truck, smoke sputtering from the muffler, perhaps with a child, a spouse, a dog, or a friend in the shotgun seat. The speaker notices a new roadside stand, hastily erected between house and road, offering hand woven oven mitts (not suburban lemonade) for sale. The recognition of the popping up of this new roadside stand, after years of seeing others pop up, gives rise to the poem’s uttering.
4. Does the language relate a sequence of events (narrative)? Is the narrative central to the meaning of the language or to the experience being shared?
The poem brings cars into yards and moves people from their farms into their town. These events spur the speaker’s response, and so in this sense, the poem relies on these event-ettes, but these events are not central to the poem’s purpose.
5. Does the language play with sound in any way? Does this sound-play point your attention to specific words or phrases central to the meaning? Does this sound-play indicate mood or attitude.
The poem uses end rhyme throughout, but in an unpatterned way. The poem uses 19 different end-sounds over 51 lines. IN line 33, the poem uses the fourteenth different end-sound (vain), and as the poem closes, it iterates this sound (gain, complain, pain, sane, pain). These words point to the poem’s controlling idea (north country poverty) and the speaker’s attitude (a mix of anger, sadness, impatience and indignation) about the effects of income inequality.
6. What images does the poem employ? Is the image central to the reader’s
experience of the poem? Be specific.
The poem focuses our attention on north country dwellings, “little” stands on the roadside selling “wild berries in wooden quarts,/Or crook-necked golden squash with silver warts,” a “landscape marred with the artless paint/ Of signs that with N turned wrong and S turned wrong.” It brings us to the windows of village dwellings, and it shows us the glint of chrome wheels of city cars “plowing” lawns and gravel driveways to make U-turns.
7. Does the language suggest an idea or theme? Is the idea central to the reader’s experience of the poem? Be specific.
The idea at the center of this poem is money “the country scale of gain” and the pathos associated with having little access to this “gain.”
8. Does the language inspire any emotional response? Is the emotion central? Specifically, what words or phrases in language evoke these feelings?
The speaker’s emotional response is complex, especially at the end of the poem when he imagines putting his neighbors out of their misery and then imagines the auditor putting the speaker out of his own pain. This image leaves me somewhat surprised.
9. Does the language play with words by “twisting” meaning? What is the effect of these twists, tropes or figures?
All of the poem’s tropes point to money, the north country’s lack of access to it, the emotions associated with this lack of access, or the speaker’s attitude toward this lack.
"A roadside stand that too pathetically pled"
This personification doubles as an indictment of those who do the pleading
for a dole of bread
The word “dole,” as a piece of diction, does double duty here as well. First, it calls to mind the expression “on the dole,” a governmental unemployment benefit. As an adjective, the world “doleful” means sorrowful or in mourning. So the metaphor “dole of bread” connects the pathetic pleading of the stand to its doleful wish for a handout from the city folk in polished cars.
"But for some of the money, the cash, whose flow support
The flower of cities from sinking and withering faint"
This metaphor indicts city-dwellers as soft, fragile beings in need of money and the amenities it can buy to keep from "sinking and withering faint."
"the landscape marred with the artless paint"
The use of paint in creating a sign is clearly an artful endeavor. So, the paradox “artless paint” provokes in me second thought -- the pitiful petition by paint, including the reversed N and S. The petition itself is artless (unless you take into consideration the reversed “R” in the “Toys R Us” logo, a case in which the reversal is purposefully artful in its attempt to signify the cute errors children make when learning to write. Here the speaker sees no such intention, as a petition it is “artless,” persuading nobody.
"You have the money, but if you want to be mean, Why keep your money (this crossly) and go along."
Apostrophe is the address of someone who, or something that, cannot respond as if it could respond. Here the speaker imagines the north country folk speaking to the drivers of “polished traffic” (synecdoche) as if it could respond.
"Here far from the city we make our roadside stand And ask for some city money to feel in hand To try if it will not make our being expand,
And give us the life the moving-pictures’ promise"
.
Here, the symbol “roadside stand” is both the stand itself, but it also represents a protest against the poverty felt by north country dwellers, in contrast to the “life moving pictures promise,” another symbol for middle or upper class wealth.
"That the party in power is said to be keeping from us"
The situational irony here points to the futility of government policy to rebalance income inequality.
"While greedy good-doers, beneficent beasts of prey,"
The oxymoron “greedy good-doers” and the paradox “beneficent beasts of prey” oppose each other. The adjective “beneficent” matches the noun “good-doers,” and the noun phrase “beast of prey” matches the adjective “greedy.” The two phrases describe the city folk who pretend to be generous, but whose generosity is self-serving.
"The thought of so much childish longing in vain,
The sadness that lurks near the open window there,
That waits all day in almost open prayer
For the squeal of brakes, the sound of a stopping car,
Of all the thousand selfish cars that pass."
Personification -- sadness lurks, waits, almost in prayer, for the sound of squealing brakes.
Personification -- selfish cars
10. Does the language use representation? Are these symbols central to the
idea of the poem?
See “symbol” above.
11. Does the language play with the reader’s expectations or sense of reality? Are these points of irony and paradox central to the idea of the poem?
See Irony, paradox and oxymoron above.
12. Does the language have an overall structure or pattern? What key words or phrases echo in the language? Is the language structured into parts (stanzas)? Does the language employ a traditional form? Is the reader’s apprehension of the experience enhanced by the poetic structure?
The poem is structured by eight punctuated sentences and rhyme. The poem moves from image to the speaker’s reaction to the image, and the speaker’s imagining how the north country folks respond to their poverty. The poem is very nearly a pastoral elegy, except the speaker is not a shepherd and the what’s being mourned is a way of life.
13. Overall, what is artful about the language? In what imaginative, intellectual, sensual or emotional way(s) does the language represent the complexity of human experience?
The poetic devices paint a character whose reaction to his own circumstances and to his neighbor’s circumstances moves from the sardonic to the wistfully suicidal.
14. Finally, is the language valuable? Is it worth reading? Remember: New
Criticism is essentially a theory of linguistic value! A work is valuable only if it expresses coherently the complexity of the human experience.
The poem is worth reading, if for no other reason than to illustrate complex human difference, even among those show live above the Notch.
15
This statement identifies what the poem does and how it goes about doing it. It is the kind of statement that the AP readers will want to see in your AP response essays.
This political poem creates a character’s whose disdain for both city folk and his pathetic neighbors give him no space for solace. An array of poetic devices, from basic metaphor to a slightly more ambitious symbol to a more complicated irony, push the reader toward the speaker’s sardonic attitude, but not completely. We leave the poem feeling as much pathos for the pitiful neighbors as we do for the condemning speaker.