{"id":428,"date":"2013-11-04T16:02:19","date_gmt":"2013-11-04T16:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/?p=428"},"modified":"2013-11-04T16:02:19","modified_gmt":"2013-11-04T16:02:19","slug":"frost-in-the-tripod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/2013\/11\/04\/frost-in-the-tripod\/","title":{"rendered":"Frost in the Tripod"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Posted by Julia Rubano ’14, for Prof. David Rosen’s course, “Modern Poetry”]<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>At the beginning of the semester, each member of my Modern Poetry class was asked to select a poet who we would later research in the Watkinson.\u00a0 There were about a dozen options on the list, including but not limited to Pound, Yeats, Williams and H.D.\u00a0 Despite the extensive number of options I had to choose from, the only poet I felt comfortable selecting without doing any background research was Robert Frost.\u00a0 My lack of knowledge of modern poets turned out to be extremely beneficial, though, and in choosing someone so obvious, it also happened that I picked someone whose work the Watkinson seems to have been collecting in droves for decades.\u00a0 That said, finding something interesting about Frost was the furthest thing from difficult.\u00a0 In fact, it was actually harder to narrow down what I could look into from the sheer amount of manuscripts, newspapers and the like that the Watkinson has to offer.\u00a0 After combing through the immense Frost archives, I decided on one of the less conspicuously impressive things they had to offer: Volume LXI No. 6 Trinity College\u2019s The Trinity Tripod <\/i>from Tuesday, October 9th<\/sup> 1962.\u00a0 At first glance, the newspaper appeared much like any other one might see today\u2014with a short section on a professor returning to campus, ads for Keds sneakers, and a chance to win something through a student representative\u2019s event.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>However, when I flipped to the second page of the paper, I was shocked at what I saw.\u00a0 In red ink and covering the majority of the page was a drawn portrait of Robert Frost with the heading, \u201cTripod Special Edition: Robert Frost.\u201d\u00a0 To the left of the drawing, a poem entitled, \u201cA Portrait,\u201d by Peter Hollenbeck.\u00a0 This is what kept me reading the rest of the newspaper, and what eventually lead me to read the entire article of, \u201cRobert Frost: Poetry and Paradox,\u201d which appears as a double page spread in the section that follows.<\/p>\n

When I first picked this piece to write about, I thought maybe it wasn\u2019t impressive enough\u2014after all, with everything the Watkinson has to offer on Frost, one\u2019s first inclination is likely to choose something along the lines of a first edition signed manuscript rather than a Trinity newspaper that is still in print at the college today.\u00a0 This simple fact, though, that I read this newspaper in my spare time at school, made this special \u201cFrost\u201d edition that much more intriguing. \u00a0The edition\u2019s main article is a series of quotes by Frost himself (who I found, after speaking with one of the very helpful Watkinson employees, had actually come to Trinity just prior to this being printed.)\u00a0 In the newspaper, Frost speaks on \u201cEducation by Poetry, Living with Poetry, The Figure a Poem Makes.\u201d\u00a0 This topic in and of itself is something I cannot imagine ever seeing in a Trinity Tripod newspaper today.\u00a0 More than anything, I think this fact serves as an interesting commentary on how the world of academia and poets within that world, especially, are valued in contemporary society.\u00a0 It is a statement in and of itself that the newspaper was entirely dedicated to furthering students\u2019 knowledge of Robert Frost\u2014it says something about the vastly different world of 2013 versus 1962, and begs the question, why aren\u2019t we reading about important figures like Frost in our college newspaper today?<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>The second section of the article is titled, \u201cCollamore Exhibition May Even Surprise The Poet.\u201d\u00a0 Written by Jerry Liebowitz, the piece is from the perspective of Mr. H. Bacon Collamore, whose collection of Robert Frost\u2019s works, manuscripts and memorabilia were on exhibit at the Library during this time in October \u201962.\u00a0 Collamore, the Chairman of Trinity\u2019s Library Associates, was a friend of Frost\u2019s and kept in touch with him since their first meeting at a convention at Wesleyan in 1936.\u00a0 Frost would send Collamore pieces to add to his collection whenever possible\u2014probably one of the reasons Trinity\u2019s Frost collection is so <\/i>expansive\u2014and at one point, even corrected a poem of his own entitled, \u201cVersions,\u201d and sent it to his friend to paste over the incorrect version which appeared in his book, In The Clearing<\/i>. \u00a0Following this, Collamore talks about how Frost traveled a surprising amount, but still managed to \u201ckeep up with the world.\u201d\u00a0 He goes on:<\/p>\n

\u201c[Frost] leads a rather strange, a rather interesting life.\u00a0 For the past several years he\u2019s owned a farm in Ripton, Vermont, where he lives\u2026. In a small house, away from the main building, with a dog or a cat\u2014right now it\u2019s a cat, but I can remember the dog he had before this cat; he was remarkable; he could shut doors!\u201d<\/p>\n

While the previous sections of this newspaper focus on letting the reader peek into Frost\u2019s mind, this section serves to let us into moments of Frost\u2019s personal life\u2014a fascinating addition to any newspaper, but especially impressive for a paper being printed at the college level.<\/p>\n

Although it might appear this way, I think it would be unfair to say that society today does not appreciate poets the way they did in the time of this newspaper.\u00a0 We also have to consider the multitude of ways we have to learn about current events and important people, versus the means that were available in the sixties.\u00a0 So perhaps the question I posed earlier (why aren\u2019t we reading about important figures like Frost in our college newspaper today?) is too great to answer in the immediate.\u00a0 Regardless, this newspaper is a true treasure and a wonderful commentary on a person whose legacy remains pertinent in both the world of academia and the world at large.\u00a0 Getting such a personal look into a canonized poet like Robert Frost was remarkable, and something I can\u2019t really imagine having being given the opportunity to experience anywhere else but the Watkinson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Posted by Julia Rubano ’14, for Prof. David Rosen’s course, “Modern Poetry”] At the beginning of the semester, each member of my Modern Poetry class was asked to select a poet who we would later research in the Watkinson.\u00a0 There were about a dozen options on the list, including but not limited to Pound, Yeats, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":432,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions\/432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}