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6.
THE YANKEE DAWDLE.
ON DISCOVERY SORGHUM,
THE GREAT CLIMATE CROP
Global warming is heating up the thinking of the world
about an inconvenient truth: Fire & Ice. All heads in the
world, except those of the Yankees, Rip Van Winkles of
the Millennium. Remember Washington Irving and his
‘Legend Of The Sleepy Hollow’ (1917) (bartleby.com)?
You will also remember The ‘Legend Of The Sleepy Yankees’ a
hundred years from now. They are not much bothered by anyone’s
global warning. I certainly hope the world is still around around 2107.
One hot little verse written by my favorite Yankee poet Robert Frost, ‘Fire And Ice,’ published in Harper’s Magazine
in the winter of 1920, has been inflaming the hearts of many a reviewer of poetry. I like what Katherine Kearns
says of it: ‘Like ice shrieking across a red-hot griddle, his poetry does, indeed, ride on its own melting.’ I like best
how Jeffrey Meyers describes it (1996, english.uiuc.edu): ‘concise, laconic, perfect and perfectly savage.’
I love Robert Frost’s poems because they show what Gary Geddes (1996) describes as ‘deceptively simple
surfaces’ that are in fact symbols (cs.rice.edu). ‘Frost writes symbolic poetry,’ he says, ‘to arrive at certain basic
truths about life;’ doing so, ‘he explores feelings and thoughts obliquely, through the use of simple bucolic incidents.’
‘Fire And Ice’ is exactly like that; it’s just a few lines that rhyme a/b/a/a/. It doesn’t matter. A poem once written is
no longer the author’s; it becomes the reader’s. This little poem speaks to this reader about global warming and
global cooling, and that’s how great the poet is, speaking across 4 scores and 7 years ago. A good poem begins
with wisdom and ends in understanding – at all times.