Is there a site where you can do searches based on

[Baitball Blogger]

words in a poem to find the poem?

When I was a kid in school, a teacher recited a poem and it mentioned cherry blossoms. She asked what we thought the poem was about. I remember raising my hand and I told her something that was very basic. (I could have said something stupid, like I recognized a symbolism for spring, which would have been a big thing because I lived in the tropics) But, one of the two class brainiacs raised her hand and blew me away with a meaning that was college level. We were in second or third grade!

So, I have been looking for that poem ever since. May have been Robert Frost.

[lapucelle]

1. Is this it?

The Oven Bird
By Robert Frost

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44269/the-oven-bird

[Baitball Blogger]

4. Jesus! Could it be?

"cherry bloom went down in showers" rings a bell!

[pangaia]

2. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44269/the-oven-bird

The Oven Bird
BY ROBERT FROST

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

[Baitball Blogger]

6. Could be.

As an adult, I can see how it refers to the changing seasons from a bird's pov. Again, there is probably some other meaning that I'm missing.

[yewberry]

7. Do you want to hear some thoughts about the meanings in this poem? nt

[Baitball Blogger]

8. Absolutely.

[yewberry]

9. Okay!

Start with the fact that Frost is not a nature poet. You'll find a person, people, or humanity in almost all of his work.

This feels like an extended metaphor to me-- either the bird as poet or as the work of poetry itself. This seems about loss and inevitable decline, and maybe regret.

The descriptions of the bird are repetitive and declarative. (He says-he says-he says-he knows-he knows) It's not a pretty song and it's common (a singer that everyone has heard) but it's loud. This commonness and rude (in the archaic sense) quality of this bird's sounds are echoed by the poet in plainness of language and grammar. The actual song of an oven bird is usually described as sounding a little like "teacher-teacher-teacher" or "preacher-preacher-preacher." I wonder if one or the other of these is meant to evoke a mood based on that whisper of meaning.

We know this is about the passage of time. The comparison of spring to mid-summer (as one to ten) seems to me to be about part of a lifespan. Spring is youth, summer is adulthood, so mid-summer seems to be the time just within sight of old age. After the beauty of spring with it's riot of birdsong and blossoms, then there is summer-- and then fall. Neat trick to go from the petal-fall to the fall season. Evocative of falls-- the fall of life, or the fall of one's own waning abilities, or even the fall of man (the original sin). Probably not the last one. But then there's the dust, which brings to mind the dust-to-dust notion of death and the fact that it's highway dust. Could highway dust be a reference to the industrialization of the period and commentary about loss of a more pastoral time?

The final 4 lines are really interesting. The bird would cease and be as other birds/ But that he knows in singing not to sing. Could that be about poetry and style? If the bird is the poet, it could be a reference/ criticism relative to poetry as a refined art and not a homespun thing. If the loud, repetitive but completely common and plain song of the bird is the poetry itself, does that mean that Frost knows, in writing, not to stray far from plainspokenness?
The question that he frames in all but words/ Is what to make of a diminished thing. What is the diminished thing? On its face, it's the cycle of seasons toward fall and beyond. It may be the poet facing impending old age and death. It may be the world diminished by industrialization.

Just my thoughts. YMMV.

[Baitball Blogger]

10. Thank you.

I can see all of that, but I wonder if it wasn't another poem that I heard in school, because that explanation went beyond what the brainiacs would have come up with in third grade!

[yewberry]

11. Could be.

But you could also say that the poem is about bird when fall is coming or that it's about the lifetime of the poet and still be right.

[PunkinPi]

3. You could try...

https://poets.org/poems

[Baitball Blogger]

5. Thank you!