Analysis of Robert Frost's:
BIRCHES
By Dr. Norman Rosenblood.

BIRCHES is a complex poem, yet it isn't: it openly refers to sexual matters, but it's conception of sexuality is not simple. The oedipal theme is obvious in its depiction of the boy's desire to bring the father's trees to submission. The trees, however, are rich symbols of several things: they contain enamel that is crazed as they click upon themselves and are shattered by the sun (read son) in an avalanche and are reduced to rubble; though not destroyed they are crippled. I would argue that the repetitive motion of swinging is masturbatory, but it is accompanied by a primal scene phantasy suggested by the clicking "upon themselves" and he is enraged by it and so seeks to master the whole scene; to cool it off by encasing it ice is not enough: the parents' sexuality must be permanently bent. Furthermore, the mother/girl must be placed in a position of perpetual subservience: “Like girls on hands and knees."

Thus, the ice is a rich condensation: it is the agent that bends the parents' sexuality, and it is also the parents' sexuality. What is even more interesting, perhaps, are the motivations for returning to the scene of the swinging. On the one hand he finds solace from suffering an eye being lashed; thus, he might be achieving revenge on the object that initially inflicted pain on him. Along with this wish is another, the fear of achieving his wish and being lost in his destructive phantasy and punished for it: “May no fate...half grant what I wish and snatch me away /Not to return."

The poem also contains a sense of wishing to destroy, but also a wish of not having destroyed too much: the trees survive, but they have felt his power:" they never right themselves." There is the idea of wanting to be held by the tree, even "set down" by it.

One might conclude that creativity, love of nature and consolation are sustained by these powerful phantasies, phantasies that permit destruction and perpetuation of the objects that bend to his will and yet will remain constant though damaged. The amalgam of guilt, fear and self-esteem give the poem a complexity of deceptively fairy tale simplicity.

"Whose woods these are I think I know His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow."

My thanks to Israel Cohen and Robert Frost for adding another dimension to the winter season here in Canada.

Norm Rosenblood

From a submission by N. Rosenblood to The Institute for Psychological Study of the Arts forum, University of Florida, PSYART@LISTS.UFL.EDU. Moderated by the late Norm Holland.

Robert Frost

BIRCHES
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

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