Acquainted with the Night

Acquainted with the Night
Robert Frost
(1874-1963)

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain – and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.



There are many things about this poem that stand out to me. The first is that it has a rhyme sequence, as many of the poems in these packets do not. It uses repetition of the idea of being acquainted with the night. On a literal sense, Frost could be saying that he is frequently alone walking at night, and cannot explain why, for it serves as a way for him to gather thoughts up alone without having to be called back to a house (houses from another street). However, the night could refer to a confusion, a period in his life in which he was in the dark- which could be explained by the line "proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right", as though it really was not a definite time for him to be able to make any sort of actions- Also the line "I dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain"- unwilling to explain the point in life he was at, and the lost feeling he had, along with the inability to know which way to go next.

poetry response

A Work of Artifice

Marge Piercy
(b. 1936)

The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers
the hands you
love to touch.



There are a lot of directions that this poem could go in... primarily having to do with the fact that the tree has been altered from the beginning. In a physical sense, it speaks to the physical alteration of things from an early age- chinese women used to bind their feet at a young age so that they would never grow and therefore they would be hobbled for life with small and dainty feet. The tree must be cared for from a very young age in order to keep it dwarfed and small- but it goes beyond this. The crippled brain- if one is brought up in a family that imposes very hateful ideas, the person will grow up with these ideas. If a person grows up in a family imposing very loving ideas, the person will generally have these ideas. One must start at an early age to alter something or cripple something. I don't understand the last line- "the hands you love to touch".

END OF BOOK

The end of the book brings with it Robert!!! However, the happy profession of love soon turns ugly. As we know, the book ends in Edna's death. It can be disputed whether she killed herself or whether she let herself die... I would say the latter, because it goes with the symbolism that is through out the book. The whole idea of swimming out further than one can recover is a common theme, because in the end, Edna swam out further than she could recover, both literally and figuratively. In her life, she was trying to free herself, but she overdid it, went a little bit crazy, and ended up forgetting the responsibilities- essentially her children- that bound her to the life she had. Therefore she lost control of it, because she realized why she could never be with Robert, and though she may not understand completely why Robert left, she understood that it couldn't happen while she still had other responsibilities. She had swum out too far, and there was no way to recover. Thus, she drowned.

25-30

This is the part that covers Edna's affair with Arobin. It is interesting to me that she can go from disliking him to having an affair with him, though such actions are not unheard of. This accentuates her real intent behind the affair, which was in fact not affections for Arobin but instead a desire to be independent and to fulfill physical desires just like she knew that men in the culture were allowed to do. It is all about the rebellion.

The other part that gets me is that she is afraid that she is being un chaste- but it is Robert that she is thinking of, not her husband. This shows that she is already independent from him in thought, but dependent, instead on someone else.

The Awakening, Chapters 20-24

This is when Leónce gets suspicious.

Ok not suspicious, just concerned- he doesn't actually suspect that Edna has any feelings for anyone, he is simply wondering why she is not acting "herself". In fact, he is wondering this so much that he pays a visit to the doctor to ask and see if there is an explanation. This strikes me as a demonstration of caring toward her, as he is honestly concerned about her health. The doctor knows about this "women trying to be independent" thing and says that it will simply pass over. They then have a laugh about it. The doctor tells Leónce to just leave her alone a while and let her be, and she will be fine. Whether or not that was good advice is to come..

The Awakening 15-19

These are the chapters in which Robert leaves for Mexico. Though Edna knows that she has special feelings for Robert, this is the part in which she truly realizes it and it begins to cause her to look at life very differently. Primarily, she is extremely dejected at Robert's absence and tries to talk about him as much as she possibly can. She is angered at his lack of correspondence to her, but continues to visit his mother and question her husband about his having seen Robert. As the chapters go on, however, she gets increasingly independent. She tells Adéle that she would not sacrifice herself for her children, but she would her life. This is a very interesting statement that Adéle can't seem to grasp- but Edna basically sees harm in the idea of letting something take over ones self that they change their entire being and life to revolve around a certain thing- such as their children. Edna however is getting back into touch with her interests that she had lost in the process of being a wife, because she had never really realized that the loss of herself had happened.

The Awakening 9-14

This is the ocean part where Edna tries to swim away. We talked a lot about this in class... how her feeling of empowerment is projected through the water. It is a huge metaphor, as she previously was not able to swim on her own, just as in her life she felt that she had to get married and be a good wife in order to live as part of the society. However when she gets into the water she has a feeling of empowerment, and suddenly she becomes extremely independent and wants to swim out by herself. She is pushing herself out of her comfort zone, both in life and in the water, and though she likes it, it frightens her at the same time. She gets literally frightened in the water, and in her life, she can never figure out her own thoughts and what is going on with her own emotions. This frightens her in a more figurative sense.