The Figure of Love on the Farm (critical 3)

There are many ways to make a poem great, in Robert Frost’s essay The Figure a Poem Makes  he gives spot on advice that any aspiring or established poet could benefit from taking heed to.  His first piece of advice regards content,  “make all poems sound as different as possible from each other, and the resources for that of vowels, consonants, punctuation, syntax, words, sentences, metre are not enough. We need the help of context- meaning-subject matter”.  Frost urges poets to strive for uniqueness not only in word placement and thought out rhythm and rhyme but most importantly, the subject of the matter.  “All that can be done with words is soon told” is implying that  a poem is much more than words.  Putting a few syllables in order on a page is not poetry.  What graduates congregated syllables to a bonafide poem is the all encompassing theme.  With a notable theme and subject matter a mess of bland words and mundane situations can be reborn into the vibrant new life of a poem.  Poetry is the art form of word placement and play.  The raw materials of a poem (words upon words) do not make a remarkable piece just as tubes of beautiful colors do not make a painting renowned.  It is the situational passion that is embedded in the construction of a piece that gives it staying power and the praise of the literary world.  “Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the poet with it. Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a petal keeps its fragrance.”  Frost describes a wild poem, a poem that has a mind of its own, a poem that takes not only the reader but also its creator on a wild ride from start to finish. 

In D.H. Lawrence’s poem Love on the Farm he successfully harnesses the beast and focuses its energy on delight and wisdom while still keeping the dangerous curves in the content.  Such a simple and archaic task as picking off a rabbit for dinner is transformed into something much more sensual.  Combining the two different but ever-so related themes of sexuality and survival he accomplishes the twists and turns that Frost discussed in his essay.  Lawrence delicately weaves a story that is not quite clear of its intention or direction until later in the poem when its figure takes shape.  “To be choked back, the wire ring, her frantic effort throttling:  Piteous brown ball of quivering fears! Ah, soon in his large, hard hands she dies” is seductively describing the farmer snaring a rabbit to bring home.  In the last few stanzas of the poem the speaker (presumable a women to whom the farmer is associated with) experiences the same type of steamy emotions as the snared rabbit in a new and totally different plane.  “God, I am caught in a snare!  I know not what fine wire is round my throat”  fallowed by the final lines of the poem “Of sweet fire sweeps across me, so I drown against him, die and find death good.”  Two phrases of similar content and dissimilar themes with a super highways connecting them throws the reader in a whorl and lets them experience a truly form fitting piece of poetry.