The Inevitable Buzz Saw: Robert Frosts’s “Out, Out – ”

"Out, Out – " by Robert Frost

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them “Supper.” At the word, the saw,
As if it meant to prove saws know what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap -
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all –
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart –
He saw all spoiled. “Don’t let him cut my hand off -
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!”
So. The hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then – the watcher at his pulse took a fright.
No one believed. They listened to his heart.
Little – less – nothing! – and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

“Out, Out – ” retells a gruesome tale of a pastoral scene turned tragic. Why would a poet choose such a scene? Frost’s first-hand witness invokes inevitable sympathy and pathos for a boy, yet the narrator remains emotionless. Perhaps the poem’s title hints at an answer, in the allusion to the final scene of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.” The symbol of that flickering, brief candle represents the brevity of life. In “Out, Out – ” few personal comments are made on the poet’s part, suggesting an idea of the inevitability of death and the futility of life. A slice-of-life cycle: presented for consumption, digested, and passed, leaving the reader to proceed to another day, another poetic meal. Day is done – bring on another. It may be like yesterday, it may not. Frost himself said, “In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on.” This has all happened before and will happen again. The reader remains with poetic crumbs on the plate, rather than with emotions wrung dry.

Vivid imagery at the onset: sound, sight and smell, permeate the senses. Against the din of the saw buzz, images of falling sawdust, stove-length sticks, the five mountain ranges and a Vermont sunset are meant to please, topped by the olfactory “Sweet-scented stuff” (3) wafted by a breeze complete a minds-eye view. The onomatopoeia of the opening salvo, “The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard” (1), is redoubled a bit later: “And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled” (7). The power tool has animalistic life. “Snarled” evokes angry dogs, wolves, and other wild beasts. “Rattled” conjures a venomous fanged snake giving imminent warning of a strike. The saw itself has a ring to it: the buzz of an angry yellowjacket or wasp hive. Each adjective resonates with sound and fury. The juxtaposition of the buzz-saw against a tranquil setting highlights the conflict between technology and nature, wherein the boy is forced to relegate his childhood, thereby going against Nature.

In this agrarian setting, a boy does the work of a man: operating a power saw. Boys, being boys, appreciate release from labor even more than their grown counterparts. How fortuitous that the boy’s sister, doing the work of a woman, arrives apron-clad, “To tell them ‘Supper’” (14), at which point he is “saved from work” (12). The buzz saw underlines the boy’s mechanical routine - this part of the day occurring by rote, each day, every day. Workaday ordinary, reinforced by the empty understatement, “And nothing happened: day was all but done” (9). The girl arrives, the men can “Call it a day” (10), the narrator regretfully adds, “I wish they might have said” (10).

“As if it meant to prove saws know what supper meant, leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap - He must have given the hand” (15-17). Ironically, to give one’s hand suggests a greeting in friendly handshake. This boy, in the end, gives much more than that. The buzz saw, a typically inanimate object, becomes a cognizant being, aggressively snarling and rattling. When the sister makes the dinner announcement, the saw demonstrates a mind of its own by “leaping” out of the boy’s hand in its excitement. The boy, still a “child at heart” (24), is not to blame for the accident; the saw is. Irony continues as the boy utters “a rueful laugh” (19). His laughter is a shocked outcry rather than a mere snicker.

The boy loses his hand in this nasty accident, but more tragically unexplainable is that while under the doctor’s anesthesia, the boy dies – apparently of shock. None in attendance can believe it. Senseless: a death signifying nothing. The boy pleads to a fellow child, his sister: “Don’t let him, cut my hand off, [sister!]” (25-26). In a lovely metonymous gesture, he holds up the hand “as if to keep the life from spilling” (21-22). Blood spills with a tilt of an arm, but life hangs in the balance. The boy’s gesticulation is a mere attempt, since nothing can be done, for he is still enough of an adult to realize that he has lost too much blood to survive. Above all, the boy hopes to maintain physical dignity in death, rather than die with a missing hand. A revelatory moment, “He saw all spoiled” (25), a vision of himself in future – a grown but incomplete man – explains the choice to let life spill. A choice – perhaps not shock at all.

Frost seems flippant in a concluding line, “No more to build on there” (33). At first the phrase seems a wry and callous reference to construction jobs where power saws are important to the overall build. But perhaps the narrator refers to life, in that there is nothing more to report. Life, eventually snuffed like an extinguished candle, the boy’s heartbeat or pulse that fades, “Little – less – nothing!” (32). Nothing can be built on nothing. Certainly sorrow, mourning and a tearful funeral will come, but none of that pertains to the poet’s message. The living have lives to lead, foundations to build upon.

By the end of the poem, the narrator runs out of words for the tragedy of the boy’s death. While the first twenty-six lines contain elegant metaphors and descriptions of the scene, the final eight lines are detached and unemotional. The narrator’s “So” and “No more to build on there” (27, 33) reveal that even the narrator is unable to find any explanation for a young boy’s death. A day happened, and in that day, this moment happened. In the last line of the poem, the narrator is completely detached, almost as if indifference is the only way to cope with the boy’s death. The people of this New England town “[turn] to their affairs,” (34) and can do nothing more than move on with their lives, as must we. The boy’s life, this poem, and life itself – a brief candle.

“Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
– William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene V

Ports of Call: John Crowe Ransom's "Good Ships"

GOOD SHIPS
John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974)

Fleet ships encountering on the high seas
Who speak, and then unto the vast diverge,
Two hailed each other, poised on the loud surge
Of one of Mrs. Grundy's Tuesday teas,
Nor trimmed one sail to baffle the driving breeze.
A macaroon absorbed all her emotion;
His hue was ruddy but an effect of ocean;
They exchanged the nautical technicalities.

It was only a nothing or so until they parted.
Away they went, most certainly bound for port,
So seaworthy one felt they could not sink;
Still there was a tremor shook them, I should think,
Beautiful timbers fit for storm and sport
And unto miserly merchant hulks converted.

The phrase, “tea party,” of late, connotes a political bent, though John Crowe Ransom’s poem refers to a high-society afternoon gathering of a time gone by. Then, as now, individuals feel the burden of singlehood. Whether meeting at a bar, a party, online, or through friends, a pressure exists – real or imagined – to pair up. The couple in Ransom’s “Good Ships,” seek camaraderie, food and fun at the tea party, but do not seek each other.

Previously acquainted, these two fleet members of the fleet meet once again on the “high seas” of Mrs. Grundy’s tea party, as they “[hail] each other” at the gathering. “High” connotes the style or breeding of a tea party room or indicates the boisterous room itself. The conversation cannot be intimate, as they must contend with the “loud surge” of the other party-goers. While the party is in full swing, neither fleet-mate feels the need to “baffle the driving breeze” as each maneuvers their way from hors d’oeuvre to canapé to petit four.

The woman becomes more and more a deserted island with each bite of her absorbing macaroon. She speaks to the man, yet she appears more interested in her delicious cocoanut morsel rather than giving him her full attention. In ship shape, she wants to be left alone, privately stowing her booty. He, meanwhile, is, “ruddy but an effect of ocean,” inferring either the temperature of the crowded room causing him to flush or having found the spiked punch and pausing several times to replenish his personal vessel. A lovely turn of phrase, “exchanged the nautical technicalities” indicates the couple exchanging weather pleasantries to pass the time. How often are, “Read any good books lately?” or “Hot, isn’t it?” the only things to say in an awkward encounter? Clearly, the couple is not having an easy, breezy conversation. Why stop to chat when there are hatches to batten down?

After “only a nothing or so,” though probably an interminable amount of time for each of them, these ships are “bound for port,” or, headed home separately – each to their individual port. Steering sure and true, the ships find themselves “so seaworthy one felt they could not sink,” their hulls full of good food and drink. Their ballast allows temporary stability and control, leading toward gastrointestinal reactions as, “a tremor shook them” on their journey home. Their tremors do not seem to be tainted with regret, but rather perhaps shudders at the memory of their uncomfortable encounter.

The poem’s final line, “And unto miserly merchant hulks converted,” is a bit of a stumper. Thankfully, blog commenters came to the rescue. Pre-party, the couple are individually “fleet” and “beautiful timbers fit for storm and sport,” able to pilot through seas choppy or calm. Post-party, they are each “hulks,” or no longer seaworthy. They hoard their booty in a miserly fashion – perhaps feeling wrecked, unwieldy, and used for storage rather than voyage. There will be other afternoon teas, other ports of call. A solo rest at home is all they need.

An online biography of Ransom notes that he, “…primarily wrote short poems examining the ironic and unsentimental nature of life.” The symbolism for these two individual ships could just as easily include Mrs. Grundy’s entire tea party fleet. These two people are in no need of a date, let alone each other. They meet at a party and they move on – ships passing in the night, as it were. Mrs. Grundy is perhaps a lighthouse in the harbor for her guests. Her Tuesday home is the place where any port in a storm will do, but these particular ships have sailed.

Personification is the Fine Print of Nye’s “Eye Test”

Eye Test by Naomi Shihab Nye

The D is desperate.
The B wants to take a vacation,
live on a billboard, be broad and brave.
The E is mad at the R for upstaging him.
The little c wants to be a big C if possible,
and the P pauses long between thoughts.
How much better to be a story, story.
Can you read me?
We have to live on this white board
together like a neighborhood.
We would rather be the tail of a cloud,
one letter becoming another,
or lost in a boy’s pocket
shapeless as lint
the same boy who squints to read us
believing we convey a secret message.
Be his friend
We are so tired of meaning nothing.

Personification is the Fine Print of Nye’s Eye Test

When visiting the optometrist’s office and reading down the eye chart, a patient is almost desperate to get it right. The doctor asks a patient to read what appears as mice-type, and it is nearly impossible. The patient wiggles in the chair and bears down, willing the letters to come into focus. Clarity fades, and with it, hope. Helpless tears make blurry vision no better, and desperation takes hold. What if those letters were desperately crying out to the patient as well? That is the personification Naomi Shahib Nye explores in her poem, “Eye Test.”

The desperate “D” begins Nye’s litany of individualized letters as she allows the patient and the eye chart to connect as one. “The P pauses long between thoughts,” as would a patient attempting to utter the correct letter aloud. The initial hope that the Eye Test will result in a score of 20/20 vision causes the patient to begin carefully and patiently, being “brave and bold” as the letter B.

The patient in this poem is a young boy, who has not gone to the eye doctor as a matter of course, as an adult would, but because he has been taken there. Perhaps his grades are slipping or perhaps he is not hitting the ball off the T as he used to do well. He has something to prove: that he can see. The brutal, teasing consequences of sporting glasses is not a future he envisions for himself, yet he “squints to read us.” The letters, too, ache to speak: “Can you read me?” they cry, begging for some kind of understanding. The boy wants to understand, believing, “we convey a secret message,” though the message is another language altogether from his – blurry and incomprehensible. The italicized plea, to “Be his friend,” is a piteous, mournful call that cannot be heard.

Nye further personifies helplessness and loneliness in the line, “We have to live on this white board together like a neighborhood.” Even early in the poem, Nye suggests that, “The B wants to take a vacation,” to no avail. Days pass, patients come and go, yet the letters feel they must dwell on their wall chart, the same proximity from their fellow letters as the day before. “Shapeless as lint,” the letters feel – alone and meaningless – the bits of what used to exist as a whole. The letters dwell in their neighborhood, perhaps like the dregs of their boy-patient’s pocket – once grand objects, now fragments, waiting in vain to be pieced back together.
The poet takes, perhaps, a jab at herself, or at her craft, in the lines, “How much better to be a story, story,” and, “We are so tired of meaning nothing.” An eye chart is merely a series of letters, or, as the poem itself puts it, “one letter after another.” So, too, are words and phrases that make up the written language – but letters put together for the purpose of an eye test, and letters put together to convey meaning are worlds apart. A poem does not wish to be a “story, story” such as an article, essay, or novel. A poem is the creative art that conveys its meaning in subtle and evocative ways. Perhaps Nye gives a nod to the truth that many believe poems mean nothing. The letters that make up the words of poems, then, are tired of trying to convey their meaning day after day, reader after reader, like an Eye Test patient.

Naomi Shahib Nye takes an unremarkable object like an eye chart on the wall and turns it into something beautiful and meaningful. The letters wish to “float like the tail of a cloud,” and in their searching to be understood, form the meanings of the words they try to convey. “Can you read me?” the letters ask? We can certainly try.