A Poem Is a Conversation

Because reading a poem is like suddenly discovering you have ten thousand thousand things in common.

We talk to people all day long, even those of us who work from home alone at our computers, but how many conversations do we have? I’m not suggesting that to be a “conversation” it has to be about something important, though that is what I thought well into my twenties. Part of emerging from that age (which I may still be in the process of doing) was learning that no conversation is ever just a conversation. Or maybe I mean never just the one that seems to be underway; there’s always at least one subtext. Not to mention we’re usually talking to ourselves as much as to the person we’re conversing with. Ideally, a conversation is more than a transfer of information, or even an “exchange of ideas.” This isn’t cynical; it’s human to want things—from conversations, from other people. (For other people, too.) What we want, why we want it, and how we go about trying to get it is very rarely all bad or all good.

Apart from being packed with subtext and claiming a kind of importance for themselves, poems, written in solitude, at a remove from the day-to-day business of the world and those who people it, don’t seem to have a lot to do with the back and forth of dialogue, or to want to hear what others have to say.

Or do they?

(Well, you already know what I think.)[1]

After Apple-Picking

by Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

LS: One of the things I love about this poem is how resistant it is to decoding. As soon as I find myself speculating as to how the experience of apple-picking has led to this poem, and what else apple-picking might stand for—writing poems? seeking knowledge? loving someone? being in the world?—it feels not only reductive but actually careless. I know it’s about more than apple-picking, but pinning it down is like shutting my eyes and ears to what you’re trying to say. Maybe the question I’m asking is, What did set this poem in motion?

After Apple-Picking: My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree

LS: Ouch. That sounds painful. So something that hurt you? I’m sorry. But, if you don’t mind my asking, why two-pointed? Don’t all ladders point in two directions, up and down?

AA-P: Toward heaven still,

LS: Oh, I see. It still is, but not you. That’s the point. (Sorry.) Something has changed, then?

AA-P: And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.

LS: You sound a little bitter about it, whatever it is.

AA-P: Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.

LS: “Winter sleep… night”—that’s the trifecta of death metaphors, all in one line. So, you’ve seen something you hadn’t seen before, and it’s of the essence of death, and it’s in the very smell of this experience, the “apples” you’ve “picked.” You can’t shake it off, you can’t rouse yourself from its effects. You used to see things a certain way and now, because of this thing that’s happened, your old (spring morning?) way of seeing the world has ceased to nourish and protect you.

AA-P: It melted, and I let it fall and break.

LS: So what you’re saying is that you saw through it, so to speak. The way the ladder sticks through the tree. (I wondered if the eye-rhyme of “trough” and “through” was trying to tell me something.) What you mean is you became disillusioned. I have felt disillusionment as a kind of death, myself.

AA-P: But I was well

LS: Of course you were. Although, if you don’t mind my saying so, along with the note of defiance, I hear a bit of irony in that line. It’s not the only time you sound that note, is it?

AA-P: But I am done with apple-picking now.

LS: Yes, that’s what I meant.

AA-P: But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.

LS: More irony. You go from the estrangement of being disillusioned straight into dreaming. Although there’s something sad about knowing what form your dreams are going to take; it takes the fun out of it. But this is the pivot of this poem, with the insistent rhymes following hard one upon another: “well… fell… tell”—all of them calling back to “melted.” Together they describe the pared-down essence of story-telling itself: Everything was going well, and then something fell—out of place, into your path, breaking some kind of calm or order (or spell)—and now here you are, left with the task of trying to make sense of it, which is another way of saying needing to tell the story. It’s another way of telling us this poem came about in response to some loss.

AA-P: Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.

LS: That sounds like a nightmare. Actually, it reminds me of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. You won’t have seen Fantasia, which happened after you were written, but maybe you know the Goethe poem[2]? It seems to me that the dream is just another form of that pane of glass you skimmed from the drinking trough. Now a magnifying glass, it causes the apples to appear bigger than life, in the way of the thoughts that plague us at night, while we could be dreaming, and likewise come and go unbidden. These dreams you’re already expecting don’t provide any relief from the new, irreversible vision, they drive it home, replaying the something having come to an end (“stem end… blossom end”) of the melting and the letting fall and break. There’s also something in there of the unbreakable connection between the causes (“stems”) that set things in motion and their ineluctable conclusions (“blossoms”), and of course yet another, pointed irony in something like disenchantment being described as a “blossom.” This line also makes me think of those candles burning at both ends, a metaphor which could be the poster girl for irony. As for that “every fleck of russet” which you suddenly perceive with this sudden, sharp focus, this newfound clarity, are they something like the flaws or faults you can’t now unsee?

AA-P: My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

LS: That’s what I thought. It still hurts. I know what you mean. Like the “ache” in the “arch,” the pain has gone so deep inside it’s become almost synonymous with the afflicted place. I see that the “two-pointed ladder” has become “a ladder-round”—no way off—and more precarious than ever: something unmoored leaning against something unstable. (I also hear “Rock-a-bye Baby” in there, but that may just be me.)

AA-P: And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.

LS: It may be obvious to you, but I always associate any apple I see in a poem, or a painting, or any work of art really, with that original apple, the first taste of the (two-pointed) knowledge of good and evil that spells the beginning of the end of innocence. But here, ironically, apples are the symbol of a kind of innocence that you have not fallen from so much as “lifted down.” It reminds me of taking the baubles off the Christmas tree, or taking something down off a pedestal. But here it’s not just a one off, or even a once and for all, it’s a floodgate. Like the enchanted brooms, each disillusion leads to more and more, the way illusions, for their part, also multiply. And now I see that you blame yourself, or recognize the part you have played, or take responsibility for this turn of events, or some combination of all of the above. That’s another irony, maybe the crowning one, why there’s so much irony in this poem, why it really hurts: You did it to yourself, as Thom Yorke says. (You probably don’t know Radiohead either.)[3] You wanted to see clearly. You wanted to keep heading toward some ideal, to protect something in you from even the invisible blemish of the mundane, the mark that no one but you would see—and this is where it’s led. Nothing can be untainted ever again.

AA-P: One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.

LS: Yes, I think I can. Before we get to the last few lines, and talk about this sleep of yours, I wanted to ask you about your lines and your rhymes. The rhymes, I notice, are all there, but not in a predictable pattern. That makes sense to me because you’re describing something that’s been marred and disrupted, but not destroyed. Maybe that’s what’s so difficult about disillusionment, the illusion persists as something lost inside the new understanding. When I pull out all the short lines they read as a kind of distillation of the whole process:

Toward heaven still
But I was well
And I could tell
The rumbling sound
For all
That struck the earth
As of no worth
Were he not gone

It’s the old you who’s gone. Or rather, the young you.

AA-P: The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,

LS: The woodchuck steps in in the next line as kind of a deus-ex-machina; he saves you from looking too long at what you’ve lost. In the idea of hibernation I hear a wish to just forget this whole new, fallen vision of the world—like the wish to just skip winter altogether. If only “his long sleep" would replace your “long two-pointed ladder.”

AA-P: Or just some human sleep.[4]

LS: Or just some human sleep. That’s the line that always stops me in my tracks. You make human sleep sound so flimsy, so mortal, so negligible, so unprofitable, and also as if there are a lot of different kinds of it, though I guess that’s your point, there are. We do manage to find a lot of different ways to ignore and forget and pretend and avoid—for all the good it does us, and although it doesn’t change a thing.[5]

AA-P: Or just some human sleep.

LS: Thanks so much for talking with me today. It’s been great, as always, to catch up with you.

Maybe what separates a conversation from an exchange of pleasantries or, indeed, unpleasantries, has to do with where it leaves us. The word conversation literally means “turning together,” and there seems to be something in there about arriving at a new perspective with someone else.[6]

The thing is, no matter how smart we are, we don’t usually find a new perspective alone. Along with what is perhaps the most familiar among them, confirmation bias, some say there may be as many as a further hundred and fifty cognitive biases designed to keep us from seeing things fresh.[7] So it’s probably not as amazing as it sometimes seems that we tend to rediscover our old familiar perspective over and over again. Even when our old way of seeing the world, or ourselves, no longer feels true, we tend to stick with the certainty of the view we’ve got, since leaving the comfort of that view can feel about as inviting as volunteering to fall off a ladder.

But if those views find themselves in familiar surroundings, among friends who make them feel understood—cherished in hand, lifted down, and not let fall—the thoughts and ideas behind them might be willing to entertain the possibility that they have outlived their purpose. They might even, no matter how beautiful and unblemished they still are, accept the risk of not surviving at all, of striking the earth… and going surely to the cider-apple heap as of no worth. Even the most blameless thoughts become superannuated, even the most exemplary ideas become obsolete.

Or maybe the point is that it’s hard to be brave enough to see those flecks of russet for what they are, which is why we need a process, and somebody to keep us company. Even if that process is just some human conversation.

Even if that somebody is just a poem.[8]