(Written in 1962 while B. was on sabbatical from the University of Minnesota, with a position as a guest lecturer at Brown University. Dedicated to Daniel Hughes, a colleague at Brown. “Sir Wilson” is a reference to Sir Thomas Wilson who published “The Arte of Rhetorique” in 1560.)
News was out that Robert Frost
was dying, and the poem urges B.’s colleagues at a Christmas gathering to set
aside their scholarship and professional worries and “dance around Mary” in
celebration of life, and of the life of one of the great poets.
And maybe it’s true, even for
career-driven English academics, for whom the initials “MLA” (Modern Language
Association) carry a world of meaning—including anxiety and dread as far as I
can tell, but that’s another story—that life in the end is more important than an
anxious focus on career. Life features circling and dancing more than footnotes
and appointments from the department chair. For this moment, in this poem,
dancing in celebration of a poet as he is dying is a more proper tribute than
studying him.
The
Secret Sits
We
dance round in a ring and suppose,
But
the Secret sits in the middle and knows.I like all of this. Wouldn’t it be nice to hear, as you’re lying on your deathbed, that a group of serious, worried high-mindeds gathered in a circle and danced to celebrate the art you brought to them?
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