Book Review: Robert Frost Farm-Poultryman
Frost's Stories Chronicle His Chicken Farming Years in New England
Sep 28, 2009
Robert Frost Farm-Poultryman, edited by Edward Connery Lathem and Lawrence Thompson (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth, 1st ed., 1981)(ISBN-10: 1584652322), is a treat for Robert Frost readers, students and admirers as well as New England chicken farming historians and chicken fanciers.
This delightful little book collects in one volume eleven articles Frost wrote about chicken breeding, keeping and showing from his own unique perspective and experience. These articles were originally published in New England poultry journals during 1903-05.
Frost as a Poultryman
During those years Frost established himself on his farm in Derry, New Hampshire, upon receiving doctor's orders to avail himself of the country air to improve his health. While following this prescription, Frost decided to take up raising chickens, an occupation seriously pursued by New England chicken fanciers.
Frost found that chickens were exhibited at juried shows all over New England. Chickens judged with high scores were prized for breeding and selling their offspring. As with any breed of farmstock, chickens were scored according to many points of conformation and attributes. High scoring hens that also proved to be good producers of eggs and offspring could be an investment for a profitable business.
Frost saw an opportunity for writing about this business of raising and showing prize chickens. He submitted stories about chicken farming to the two leading trade journals. Eventually eleven in all were published by Eastern Poultryman and Farm-Poultry.
The breed of chicken most often mentioned in the book is White Wyandotte. Wyandottes actually come in many colors. They are an American poultry breed dating from the late 1800s. There are also references in Frost's stories to Cochins, Brahmas, Rocks, and Langshans.
Frost's Chicken Fancier Stories
In these stories the reader finds a barely altered voice of Robert Frost in prose from the clear and insightful mind that is revealed in his remarkable poetry.
Styled to be about chicken farming, there is nothing of the dry or dull "how to" approach in these stories. Rather, they are a vivid description of people, the quirks of New England farm life and human nature.
Over 100 years later, these stories withstand the test of time as highly entertaining reads, a testament to superior storytelling. In the voice of Robert Frost, both the people and their passion as chicken fanciers come to life with a timeless appeal.
The opening sentence in the first story might be a projection of Frost himself at the time. Though a city boy born and raised, Frost found a refuge in farm life.
Thus the story opens: "Aiken had worn the starched collar of servitude to dress long enough; he wished to get back to loose clothes and the country, and he saw in hens a way." (p. 31)
The rest of the story is perhaps less autobiographical though; it humorously and vividly proceeds to describe poor Aiken and his redoubtable wife's complete debacle in their efforts to keep chickens. The story is a road map of how to do it all wrong. (Perhaps some autobiographical bits could be in there at that.)
"A Start in the Fancy," a second story, co-stars a prize chicken and the novice farmer who is nearly convinced by the gratuitous ridicule of neighbors that he has hugely overpaid $10.00 for this blue ribbon hen, only to be validated later in the surprise (to him) sale of five of her young offspring for $5.00 each.
Frost's rendition of this story is deceivingly simple and matter-of-fact. Told primarily through dialogue, the story artfully conveys the New England cadence and draws a three-dimensional picture of the self-doubting farmer and the surprise buyer.
In another humorous story, "The Question of a Feather," a poultryman's journal editor comes face to face with two spinster sisters who seek his opinion on the ethics of plucking an errant feather (a show fault) from their prize hen before presenting her at show. In this story about the ethical challenges of chicken showing and the editor's discomfiture in the middle of it, Frost takes time to note the encroachment of the city upon rural life.
Frost's inclusion of the following passage describing the sisters' cottage setting reveals his acute sensitivity and subtle commentary on the effect of social change upon the landscape, implying the other changes sure to follow:
"The surroundings were almost rural. In the near distance lingered a dark clump of tall timber; there were fields and gardens and orchards. But here and there you saw a house going up, and you heard the sound of boards unloading, and of nails driven home. The city streets were there, too, though it was plain that the house he sought had been there before the streets, for it was set down without reference to their direction, like some mirage through which you might expect to see the more substantial objects behind it." (p. 54)
As exemplified in this passage, these charming stories are filled with Frostian imagery that tantalize both the reader's imagination and intellect, evidencing, like his poems, this great poet's ability to elevate life's everyday experience into something truly profound.
Each story is unique and different from the others in its particular aspect of chickens and chicken farming. Together, though, they provide a means of following Frost through his chicken farming phase within a larger context of New England culture at the turn of the 20th century.
Reading these entertaining stories, one might be sitting with Frost on his front step reminiscing. It is a conversation to savor.
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