A Fountain, A Bottle, A Donkey's Ears, and Some Books ~ by Robert Frost

Excerpts:
"We trod uncomfortably on crunching glass
Through a house stripped of everything
Except, it seemed, the poetess's poems.
Books, I should say! ~ if books are what is needed.
A whole edition in a packing case
That, overflowing like a horn of plenty,
Or like the poetess's heart of love,
Had spilled them near the window, toward the light,
where driven rain had wet and swollen them.
Enough to stock a village library ~

"... Books were not thrown irreverently about.
They simply lay where someone now and then,
Having tried one, had dropped it at his feet
And left it lying where it fell rejected.
Here were all those the poetess's life
Had been too short to sell or give away."

~ The Poetry of Robert Frost, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969
Edited by Edward Connery Lathem

Neil Paul has hooked us on Frost. Thank you for coming by Neil. One of our favourites above but don't stop with the excerpts, you must read the entire poem.
Please Note: We like to think that our little blog is like a visit to the bookshop. Stay a while, pick up a book, engage in conversation with another reader or a local author. Take a walk around the village.

Robert Frost was awarded several Pulitzer Prizes for literature during his lifetime. Please join us at 1:00 p.m. today at The Neat Little Bookshop when local author and poet, Neil Paul, will be reading Robert Frost's poetry.
Neil Paul and Mrs. Huitema with a Copy of Neil's Book of Poetry

Country Calling ~

Quotations by Robert Frost ~

"Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour."
~ The Black Cottage, 1914

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in."
~ The Death of the Hired Man, 1914

"The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people."
~ The Gift Outright, 1942

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference"
~ The Road Not Taken, 1916

"The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and
ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love."
~ Collected Poems, 1939 'The Figure a Poem Makes'

"No Tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader."
~ Collected Poems, 1939, 'The Figure a Poem Makes

"Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being."

"I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down."
~ Interviews with Robert Frost, 1966 ~ Edward Lathem
Source: The Oxford Dictionary of QUOTATIONS OXFORD, University Press, 2001

Note: Please join us when Neil Paul reads Robert Frost, Thursday, November 24 at 1:00 p.m.

Friends of The Bookshop ~ Another "24-Carat Character." Pam Thomas works at Cypres, Caledonia, Ontario.

Emma Visits The Bookshop ~

Emma Chooses a Book

We are happy that you enjoyed your visit to the bookshop.

Looking For A Sunset Bird In Winter ~

The west was getting out of gold,
The breath of air had died of cold,
When shoeing home across the white,
I thought I saw a bird alight.

In summer when I passed the place,
I had to stop and lift my face;
A bird with an angelic gift
Was singing in it sweet and swift.

No bird was singing in it now.
A single leaf was on a bough,
And that was all there was to see
In going twice around the tree.

From my advantage on a hill
I judged that such a crystal chill
Was only adding frost to snow
As gilt to gold that wouldn't show.

A brush had left a crooked stroke
Of what was either cloud or smoke
From north to south across the blue;
A piercing little star was through.

~ Robert Frost, The Poetry of Robert Frost, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964
(Reminder: Neil Paul will be at The Neat Little Bookshop on Thursday, Nov. 24, reading Robert Frost. Please join us!)