Apple Picking
"Upon my way to sleep before it fell, What form my dreaming was about to take."There is no question here of tones playing against a traditional form; rather, an original rhythmic form grows out of the dramatic setting and the initial commitment in tone. Pre-sleep and sleepy reminiscence of the day condition all that is said, and the speaker's first words show what form his dreamy talk will take. His 'ladder's sticking through a tree'-which is accurate and earthy-but 'through a tree / Toward heaven.' As the apple-picker drowses off, narrative of fact about the ice skimmed from the trough gets mixed with dream, and the time references of the tenses become a bit confused:Upon my way to sleep before it fell, What form my dreaming was about to take. 'Could tell' and 'was about to take' seem to refer both to the morning and to the present state of 'drowsing off.' Everything said throughout the poem comes to me through sentences filled with incantatory repe
I am finally quite uncertain of what is happening, and that is what the poem is about: One can see what will trouble This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is. 'After Apple-Picking' illustrates that 'the poet is a person consenting to dream of reality. Fragrance and sleep blend, as sight and touch merge in I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight. The rest of the second line, barely iambic, barely rhyming, casual and rough, assures that the poet/speaker has at least one toe in reality. This blurring of experience focuses in the central metaphor of the poem, 'essence of winter sleep. titions and, rhymes and in waves of sound linked by likeness of pattern. Since the word 'sleep' has already occurred few times, it completes the poem with a special finality of sound and meaning. The meaning implied by the self-hypnosis and dreamy confusion of rhythm is finely suggested in the image of 'the world of hoary grass,' the blurred seeing of morning that anticipates the night vision. The slight elevation of 'One can see' recalls the more mysterious seeing of the morning, just as the almost banal lyricism of 'This sleep of mine' sustains the rhythm of dream-confusion. From the opening lines, apparently matter-of-fact talk falls into curious chain-like sentences, rich in end-rhymes and, echoes of many sorts. ' The last word either introduces a new rhyme that will be picked up in the next stanza. ' The closing metaphor of the poem, the woodchuck's 'long sleep,' adds to the strangeness of 'winter sleep' by bringing in the non-human death-like sleep of hibernation. ' The 'consent' in this instance I believe is implied in the perfection of the form.
Common topics in this essay:
Robert Frost,
,
tell form,
tell form dreaming,
sleep fell tell,
fell tell form,
sleep fell,
seeing morning,
tone rhythm,
form dreaming,
tree /,
fell tell,
metaphor poem,
|
Acceptance Essays
