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When we think about 19th century American poets, we mostly think of Whitman, Dickinson and Poe, and with good reason. Whitman and Dickinson remain fresh and modern even after a century and a half. They’re the poets who are included in college and even high school syllabi (when they’re not focusing exclusively on having students read newspaper articles) because they still speak in cadences we can relate to, about thoughts and emotions and ways of seeing the world that still resonate. Poe has that grasp of the eerie which still has the power to haunt us, through his short stories and “The Raven,” even though we’re more likely to make fun of “The Bells” than be mesmerized by it. Well, how is the frost out on the punkin? Here’s how Riley saw it. When the Frost is on the Punkin When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock, And the clackin’ of the guineys, and the cluckin’ of the hens, And the rooster’s hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence; O, it’s then’s the times a feller is a-feelin’ at his best, With the risin’ sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest, As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock, When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock. They’s something kindo’ harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here— Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees, And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees; But the air’s so appetizin’; and the landscape through the haze Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days Is a pictur’ that no painter has the colorin’ to mock— When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock. The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,
And the raspin’ of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn; The stubble in the furries—kindo’ lonesome-like, but still A-preachin’ sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill; The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed; The hosses in theyr stalls below—the clover over-head!— O, it sets my hart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock, When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock! Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps
Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps; And your cider-makin’ ’s over, and your wimmern-folks is through With their mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and saussage, too! ... I don’t know how to tell it—but ef sich a thing could be As the Angels wantin’ boardin’, and they’d call around on me— I’d want to ’commodate ’em—all the whole-indurin’ flock— When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock! —James Whitcomb Riley
What’s to dislike about this? Well, if you hated the Little House TV series, you’ll find plenty to hate here. For a start, the phonetic representation of dialog, a convention we’ve mostly outgrown, and our literature is mostly the better for it. But try to translate this one into correct spelling, with all the dropped g’s picked up and neatly stuck back in. It just stops working. Riley wrote in a time when rhyme and meter were the poet’s natural language. For most of us today, even if we love forms and choose to write in them, it’s RMSL – rhyme and meter as a second language. And all too often, it sounds that way. Henri Coulette spoke meter like a native; Annie Finch does. But even for those adepts, it takes a kind of determination that maybe Riley didn’t have to gin up. And the faux rustic stances, and the faux rustic language. Well, maybe it’s not so faux. It takes a keen ear to distinguish between the sounds of the guinea fowl and the hens. And somehow if you had to look up the meaning of shock before writing the poem (as I had to when reading it), you wouldn’t get it as right as Riley did. Maybe “hallylooyer” is a little over the top, but what about “kyouck”? That’s a striking original coinage, and it could only come from someone who’d spent some time listening to turkeys. An ear for the sounds of poetry, like an ear for music, has to be trained. Some may pick it up more quickly than others, but everyone can benefit from the nurturing of that gift, and Riley’s use of assonance and internal rhyme is one good place to find such nurturance. The “mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees” carries assonance through a whole line, drawing the two sounds—one the familiar buzz, the other a mumble you’d have to strain to hear, together, while the soft consonants of “mumble” and the sibilants of “buzz” set them apart—and anyway, they’re summer sounds, gone into memory. “The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn” is two vowel sounds, and it would have to be—any more husky, rusty russel would weigh the line down too much. But look at the next line. It sort of does the same thing, with two vowel sounds, but so different: the rhyming short “a” sounds, surrounded by clashing consonants, followed by much more innocuous consonants surrounding two different “o” sounds. And I’ll take his word for it that “tossels” for “tassels” is a familiar regionalism. He knows a lot more about the region than I do. “When the Frost is on the Punkin” shares a family tree with his older brother, Keats’s “To Autumn,” and his younger brother, Frost’s “After Apple Picking.” Those two brothers went out into the world and did great things, scaling philosophical heights, plumbing emotional depths, while Mr. Riley’s middle brother stayed home with the fodder shocks. But the little homebody had warmth and charm and grace, and while you might not follow him with the awe his brothers have merited, you could do worse than drop in on him on a brisk autumn day when the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock (which means twelve sheaves of wheat placed upright and bound together in order to allow the grain to dry and ripen). |