Mr. Frost’s 1962 appearance at Agnes Scott, for the talk and reading of January twenty-fifth from which this excerpt has been drawn, was heralded in both the student and local-area press as being his twentieth visit (dating from 1935), to the Decatur, Georgia, women’s college.
I HAVE OFTEN thought that I like a lot of chances to set myself right with people, and yet not try to be too definite and defining—just sort of feel my way with them.
I’m an invidious—insidious—no, let’s say that I’m an insidious nationalist, if you know what that is. You’d know that without my saying it. It’s all scattered through my poems, what a terrible American I am—terrible. You get used to it. If you see enough of it, you don’t mind it, anyway. You can stand it, no matter what your politics are. […]
Now, I was going to say a few words about a given subject. I’ve told people once or twice that I once gave a lecture on how you can tell when you’re thinking. I go around and tell about the time I gave that lecture. I haven’t repeated it. They’re not written down, you know.
They ask me don’t I want to give it tonight? I say: “That’s a very expensive lecture. I keep that for big money.” It’s a secret, I tell ’em, how you can tell when you’re thinking. But there’s a little you can say about it […].
I mean something beyond just opinionating. That’s like voting, you know. I vote against women’s voting, say. “That’s your opinion,” we’ll say. (You girls don’t believe in voting, I suppose.) “That’s just your opinion. Haven’t you got any more to say about it than that? And if you haven’t got any more to say about it, don’t tell me.”
That’s not thinking. That’s opinionating. Agreeing with me isn’t thinking. That’s not what I mean.
I tell you, all thinking comes down to this word “sharp”—that we use in slang almost: “He’s very sharp. He’s very sharp tonight.” That means he missed no chances to be reminded, by what was going on, of something interesting related to it. His mind is easily reminded—well-reminded; he’s right up, fresh. That’s the best of all things. […]
The readiness with which you’re reminded by what’s going on, reminded of what’s distant in time—books, life, and so on—aptly reminded. The word “reminding” is all there is to thinking. And every good thought that counts as a thought is a feat of association like that.
Just say that, for me. That’s the heart of it all, a feat of association. You make a good, apt association, to the pleasure of everybody.
Now, we use the word “happy” thought, in the wrong way. It’s corrupted. It’s sunk down. What it originally meant was just that: that happy association—not a cheerful association, not something that makes you happy; something that charms you because it’s fresh and original.
The word “original” will do for it. (I don’t like the word too much.) I don’t know; not necessarily greatly original, but it’s a fresh, fresh reminding. […]
I have to speak with some feeling of sorrow. Robinson Jeffers has just died, my distant friend. I never knew him very well. He kept himself in his tower in California, and I never go to towers. But I admired him. I admired his pessimism. And just for that, that it was a fresh, original pessimism—very dark, bitter.
And what a fine figure this is for throwing life away, you know. It’s not my figure. But it’s his—and a good one and a bad one; the worse it is the better. He says, “Give your heart to the hawks.” It’s the title of the poem.
That’s all you need. That’s all there is to life: “Give your heart to the hawks.” He died in that spirit. Touching.
I never tried to deal with that. I just took it as a good black spot in my thoughts. But he said something that I was confronted with. (That doesn’t confront me. I know all that sentiment in other writers. It’s an ancient one: “Give your heart to the hawks.” It’s a pretty way to put it.) But he says “shine, perishing republic” to us—shine, perishing republic.”43 And I used that, happened to use it, in my new book that was gone to press before I knew all about his death. Just one line: “shine, perishing republic.”
What are you going to do with that? Either let it alone or include it in my book. And the way I include it is that everything that shines, shines by perishing—candles, the sun, and me.
And then I don’t know what he does with it. That’s what I do with it. I think he’s darker than that. Mine is everything shines by perishing, everything. And you’ve got to remember that. It’s a great, great thought. But mine includes his.
And how long will the United States shine before it perishes? (I always say—you know, talking about money—I tell ’em I always charge more for prophecy than I do for history.) I don’t know how long we’re going to last. The song says, “It shall wave a thousand years.”44
That’s a good long time. We’ve only spent two hundred of it. Thousand is—if you look in history—it’s a good long time. It’s longer than most have done it. The great days of a nation are seldom anything like that. You’ve got to think of that.
And what shall we do while we are spending, while we’re burning through our lives? That you ask yourself as you look around today. We’re squandering our light, almost, to the world. It’s wonderful we are; wonderful shining thing we are. But you wonder about the economy of it. We have to ask the economists.
I’m not trying to frighten you. I’m not scared if you’re not. But a thousand years evolves, you know. We’ve got lots of time to turn around in that time.
But don’t think we’re forever. We can’t be. Nothing is forever. Everything shines to perish, perishes to shine. And so that takes you out of all the little quibbling thoughts of the day.
Here we are, the richest nation in the world—the richest nation the world has ever seen, with the widest diffusion of wealth that the world has ever seen—and shining as such, so that everybody looks in this direction. And if we’re troubled by our responsibility of shining to perish, we’re a small lot, petty-minded. Big, let’s make it big and shine.
And to measure it all the time, you know. We don’t need to just burn like a prairie fire. That was Tom Paine’s idea of democracy. It was going to be a prairie fire that swept the world. This isn’t like that. This is a great steady flame—like Sirius, like the star Sirius, and like the sun—as we shine.
Nobody knows in the universe anything that isn’t spending. One of the strange things, the confidences, that the scientists get up for themselves is that something must be coming in. They haven’t any evidence of it anywhere, not a glimmer of it. Everything is spending, spending—grand, grand spending.
We’re not talking about terms, what the terms are. They’re vast terms, little terms, and all that.
Well, the point is, though, that’s just my handling of something I encounter. I see that “shine, perishing republic,” and I know there’s a certain note of pessimism in his poem. Without reading further, I know just how he’ll take it. But I know another way to take it: everything shines; perishes to shine.
That’s just what I mean by thinking. That’s all there is to thinking: feat of association. And it’s better never to take anything head on, contradict it. If you can, sort of outwit it—go it one better, by some liveness in your own mind, live mind. And remind, remind. […]
I’ve had to say lately, to myself, what I’m around for. I’m around for my poems, chiefly. And I’m not around preaching. And I’m not around teaching. I just found this out: I’m around looking for kindred spirits, for their comfort and mine. And I do it on a percentage basis.
But that’s what is. I’m wandering around—like butterflies in the air, you know—looking for kindred spirits. That’s all, not preaching or teaching.
You don’t have to agree with anything I say. You don’t have to get mad at me, ’cause I don’t get mad at you. And I’m not out for any particular cause. I belong to causes, but I’m very, very, very happy in my relation to ’em. […]
I’ve shown you—sort of what I call in a loose, scattered way; not loose, but a scattered way—about what I mean by thinking—not arguing, not pressing; no, presenting—that I’ve shown myself as a person sharply reminded of this, that, and the other thing in the universe, when I’m feeling right. (Sometimes when I’m not really feeling right, I just wonder where it’s gone.) That’s all there is to it, the condition that makes you kind of sharp about being reminded. You sometimes blame yourself when you should have been reminded by something, and somebody else is better, does it for you.
In history—just one word more—there was a great historian named Gibbon. And I remember reading very young, in a little preface to the history of Rome, The Decline and Fall—a little preface about him, years ago—that as he was dying he was still at—they said—still at his old historical parallels. He was always being reminded of one thing by another. He died with those parallels and surprising people with his parallels; connections, associations, you see.
That had a lot to do with my life—just thinking and beginning to see that—that when you’re good, mentally good, your parallels are good, your life.
—at Amherst College, April 21, 1958:
THIS SUBJECT IS always the subject up in reading poetry:
There are three meanings, you might say. There’s the first meaning, the surface meaning; and the second, intimation that the poet is more or less aware of. (In painting it’s the same, you know; in any art. There’s the ulterior, always the ulterior.)
And, then, there seems to be another something that is the question, “What’s the matter with the author; what’s eating him?” And, you see, that always bothers me a good deal. I’m willing to have ’em going on that way and glad to have ’em interested in me, of course. […]
My tendency is to simplify the ulterior. There is always something that’s around the edges of it. And you can always make a pretty turn of it. I don’t mind what they do to it, as long as they don’t debase it. If they go me one better in it—make something amusing out of it, make something prettier than I made—that’s all right. But to debase it, it bothers me.