For the blog this week I am going to further a point I raised in class about the Woodchuck  found in the opening paragraph of the chapter Higher Laws. The Drumlin Woodchuck by Robert Frost calls attention to a Woodchuck as well. The Drumlin Woodchuck is a poem associated with nature, wilderness, and retreating from the influence of man. According to an article by Fritz Oehlschlaeger titled Two Woodchucks, or Frost and Thoreau on the Art of the Burrow the; “admiration for Walden(by Frost) is well known, and numerous critics have suggested both general and specific parallels between the works of Thoreau and Frost.” While this admiration adds a layer of depth when reading Frosts poems as they can be connected to the ideas of Thoreau, it is interesting to look at the poem A Drumlin Woodchuck as an explicit nod to the Walden, where the Frosts poem can be seen as a response. Oehlschlaeger claims to have discovered this original relationship between these “two woodchucks”, and suggests that Frost uses the name Thoreau through a pun; “so instinctively thorough”(line  31). The usage here is claimed to be a pun By Oehlschlaeger, and this analogy seems apt.

 

The Oehlschlaeger; Two Woodchucks, or Frost and Thoreau on the Art of the Burrow Critical Essay:  http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3046&context=cq

Now I looked all over for a link of the poem A Drumlin Woodchuck and could not find it anywhere online, so I will type it out as I think the poem needs to be on this blog to get the full effect of how Frost is paying homage to Walden in this poem. This is taken Robert Frost Poems by St. Martins Paperbacks and is being put here for educational use only:

The Drumlin Woodchuck By Robert Frost

One thing has a shelving bank,

Another a rotting plank,

To give it cozier skies

And make up for its lack of size

 

My own strategic retreat

Is where two rocks almost meet,

And still more secure and snug,

A two-door burrow I dug.

 

With those in mind at my bank

I can sit forth exposed to attack

As one who shrewdly pretends

That he and the world are friends.

 

All we who prefer to live

Have a little whistle we give,

And flash, at least alarm

We dive down under the farm.

 

We allow some time for guile

And don’t come out for a while

Either to eat or drink.

We take occasion to think.

 

And if after the hunt goes past

And the double-barrelled blast

(Like war and pestilence

And the loss of common sense),

 

If I can with confidence say

That still for another day,

Or even another year,

I will be there for you, my dear,

 

It will be because, though small

As measured against the All,

I have been so instinctively thorough

About my crevice and burrow.

 

Now with the poem laid out, it is easier to find instances where the link between this poem and Thoreau might be made other than the claimed pun at the end. With looking at the first paragraph of Higher Laws in Walden, It is interesting that Thoreau says his initial urges when seeing the Woodchuck are that he” felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented” (page 143). This is mirrored with the poem, which is from the woodchucks perspective, where him and “the world are not friends”(line 12)  Also this relationship with man as a savage is mirrored in  how the woodchuck hides from man in his retreat because of the “hunt” (line 25).  It is as if these two pieces are speaking to each other from the two different perspectives. Finally, there is a something to be said of the retreats of the Woodchuck, which could also be an ode to Thoreau in how he similarly took retreats from mans influence with him going to Walden and having similar reflections of the need to retreat away from the destructive world of man.  All of these ideas are based off the original claim laid forth by Oehlschlaeger in his article, and I personally find this relationship between the two amusing because of how deep and multi- layered Robert Frost’s poems are. With reading Frost under this lens, and from an ecotentric perspective similar to Thoreau, I find even more layers are added. So much that these connections could be furthered even more than done by myself here and by what is done in the Oehlschlaeger article.