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“Directive”, Robert Frost’s Guide to Reading His Poetry
In “Directive” Robert Frost tells his readers how to interpret meaning from his
other poems. In a sense, “Directive” is literally a guide or directions on how to read
Frost’s poetry. This guide is especially useful when reading “Birches” and “The WoodPile”. Both of these poems explore pushing beyond one’s limits and getting lost, then
suddenly finding the meaning that Frost has hidden within the lines. If readers do not
follow the instructions in “Directive”, Frost hints that they will never fully understand the
meaning in his poetry.
“Directive” begins with the command to “Back out of all this now” because it is
“too much for us” (“Directive,” 1). Frost is giving the reader the first step to reading his
poetry. The reader has to separate themselves from their daily lives, schedules, and
worries because they are too overwhelming. Only then can they begin to get lost in the
poem. To begin this separation Frost takes the reader into the past: “Back in a time made
simple by the loss / Of detail” (“Directive,” 2-3). According to the poem, the past is a
simpler time because we do not have all of the details of people’s lives that make them
complicated. Like he says in the first line, Frost wants the reader to forget the
complications in their life as they begin to read his poetry. He wants them to lose
themselves the way that people in the past have been lost through forgotten details.
This idea is continued in a simile, “Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather”
(“Directive,” 4). The graveyard simile works on two different levels; it gives us an image,
but also fits the context of the poem. Frost is asserting that the people are dead and
forgotten, literally and figuratively buried in the graveyard, the details on their headstones
worn away by the weather over time. The idea of forgetting is continued with the line, “a
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town that is no more a town” (“Directive,” 7). The repetition adds to the ambiguity of
these places in the next few lines where the town is substituted for a “farm” and a
“house”. The same ambiguity is seen in “The Wood-Pile” when the woods is described as
“Too much alike to mark or name a place by / So as to say for certain I was here / Or
somewhere else” (“The Wood-Pile,” 7-9). Just as the town, farm, and house lose their
individual identities in “Directive”, the forest in “The Wood-Pile” does not have any area
markers to identify it as unique. At this point in both poems the reader is getting lost in a
space due to its lack of detail.
In the next line Frost plays with the title of the poem saying, “let a guide direct you
/ Who only has at heart your getting lost” (“Directive,” 9). It is ironic that a guide would
want someone to get lost when their job is to plainly to show a person the way. In much
the same way this poem is named “Directive”, but it is a guide to getting lost within our
own minds as well as within poetry. In many of his poems Frost pushes the reader further
than they have gone before, getting them lost intentionally.
The guide in “Directive” can be paralleled to the small bird in “The Wood-Pile”.
The narrator grasps at some form of direction, so he makes up a story about a bird that he
is unintentionally following. Although there is no guide in “Birches”, the reader is still
taken further than they have gone before when they climb “To the top branches, climbing
carefully / With the same pains you use to fill a cup / Up to the brim” (“Birches,” 36-38).
Water filling over the brim of a cup seems impossible, just as going beyond our normal
way of thinking and getting lost in Frost’s poems does. “Directive” is answering our need
as readers to have a guide show us the way to pushing farther than we have ever gone
before, even if it is the way to getting lost.
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Frost then returns to the idea of history being simplified due to loss of detail in the
next few lines, “there’s a story in a book about it: / Besides the wear of iron wagon
wheels” (“Directive,” 13-14). He is referring to there being a story in a history book, but
the history book does not cover everything that happened here. Thus, the details are lost.
Then, Frost describes a more natural history not involving humans; “The chisel work of
an enormous Glacier / That braced his feet against the arctic Pole. / You must not mind a
certain coolness from him” (“Directive,” 16-18). There is more history that involves
nature rather than just humans and our society. Frost also personifies the Glacier, playing
with the word coolness. Glaciers are made of ice so they are cold, but he is also saying
that as you begin to lose yourself you may feel resistance.
This resistance manifests itself in the reader as insecurity. In this poem the reader
may feel that they are “being watched from forty cellar holes / As if by eye pairs”
(“Directive,” 20-21). Frost is describing the feeling we get when we are alone and
insecure with unfamiliar surroundings. This is also the feeling one might get while
getting into one of Frost’s poems. As the reader becomes increasingly insecure Frost
gives them a solution, “Make yourself up a cheering song of how / Someone’s road home
from work this once was / who may be just ahead of you on foot” (“Directive,” 29-31).
Frost tells the reader that if they feel alone and insecure, they can make up a fantasy
about another person so that they do not feel so alone and cut off from society.
In “The Wood-Pile”, the subject also feels lost without other people, so he makes
up a story about a logger who has forgotten his woodpile. Even as the imagined story
begins to crumble when the subject realizes the “wood was gray and the bark warping off
it” (“The Wood-Pile,” 29), he keeps making up excuses to cling to the idea that he is not
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alone. The same technique is used in “Birches” when the narrator looks to the woods and
says, “I like to think some boy’s been swinging them” (“Birches,” 3). However, this story
also loses its credibility when he realizes “swinging doesn’t bend [birches] down to stay /
As ice storms do” (“Birches,” 4-5). Once again the story about a person is derailed by an
obvious natural cause. “Directive” continues similarly when the “two village cultures
faded / Into each other” and “both of them are lost” (“Directive,” 35-36). Even though the
subject, in this case the reader, makes up a story about another person to remain attached
to society, the details of the person are lost and ambiguity has separated them.
However, Frost asserts, “The height of the adventure is the height” (“Directive,”
34); or, the most exciting part of reading a poem is when you can forget all of the details
of your life, and move beyond them. He says, “if you’re lost enough to find yourself / By
now, pull in your ladder road behind you / And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me”
(“Directive,” 36-38). Once the reader has gotten lost enough in a Frost poem or in their
mind while reading a Frost poem, they have to stay closed off to the outside world.
Pulling in the “ladder road” gives us a literal image of pulling in a ladder so no one can
reach you, but it also means not letting anyone else come down the road that Frost has
just described to get to this place. Thus, you are closing yourself off to the outside world,
society, and all of the details and worries of daily life. The same idea is given in
“Birches” when the narrator says, “I’d like to get away from earth awhile” (“Birches,”
48). He wants to get lost for a bit without the constant interruptions of daily life.
Until this point in “Directive”, Frost has only told us how to get lost, and thus get to
this place. Now, he goes on to describe the place we have hopefully arrived at while
reading his poetry. He says, “The only field / Now left’s no bigger than a harness gall”
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(“Directive,” 40). The only thing that matters now that we have forgotten everything else
is this small area surrounded by a confusing forest like area we have gotten lost in. This is
similar to the field imagery in “Desert Places”, but here it is Frost and the reader’s own
sheltered place. The reader and him are both a part of it rather than looking in from the
outside.
“First there’s the children’s house of make-believe” (“Directive,” 41) in the
hypothetical field that Frost has created. He makes it clear that the place we have arrived
in is not complex, it is actually somewhere like a children’s playhouse. By separating
from our daily issues, and focusing only on the poem we have reverted to something
simple and familiar. Then, Frost tells us to “Weep for what little things could make [the
children] glad” (“Directive,” 44). He is saying that worthless things like his previously
mentioned “shattered dishes” are easy for children to have fun with. However, when we
get older we see them for what they really are, just some shattered dishes, and cannot see
any more value. It is then revealed, “This was no playhouse but a house in earnest”
(“Directive,” 48). Therefore, the children’s house of make-believe was actually
something important and worthwhile. Similarly, Frost’s poems are sometimes interpreted
as simple, almost childish stories about nature when in fact the hidden meaning is much
deeper.
Next, the reader is told, “Your destination and your destiny’s / A brook that was the
water of the house” (“Directive,” 49-50). What the reader has been searching for during
this (or any) Frost poem has finally been found. In a sense the water brings a clearness
and purity to the simple house. The stream imagery is continued with, “We know the
valley streams that when aroused / Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn”
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(“Directive,” 53-54). Literally, streams eventually drop off things that float in them on
the banks or overhanging branches. In the same way the reader has left all of their
complications strewn along the way as they read the poem and come to this spot.
Finally, Frost gets to the meaning of the poem. He says, “I have kept hidden...A
broken drinking goblet like the Grail” (“Directive,” 55-56). It is important to note that
Frost does not say he has hidden the actual grail, known for having been used by Jesus
and having supernatural powers. He has hidden something like the grail, but in reality it is
only a “broken drinking goblet”. The goblet is “Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t
find it” (“Directive,” 56). The spell in this case is the getting lost portion of the poem, and
the knowledge or moment of clarity comes with the goblet. If the reader is not able to let
go and lose him or herself, reading Frost’s poetry correctly, he believes they will never
find the true meaning in any of his poems.
Frost reiterates this feeling when he says the people who do not read his poems
correctly “can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t” (“Directive,”59). Frost is
referring to Mark 12:4 which states “That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and
hearing they may hear and not understand; let at any time they should be converted, and
their sins should be forgiven them” (King James Bible, Mark 12:4). Frost means that if
someone reads his poem, but does not take the time to understand it, they will never get
the meaning or moment of clarity that he has left buried there, just as those who do not
understand the parables will not be saved until they are converted and fully understand
the meaning behind each Bible verse. This allusion to the Bible is also a hope by Frost
that when people do follow his directions and understand his meaning that they will get
that moment of clarity.
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Then, the reader is surprised by Frost’s admission, “(I stole the goblet from the
children’s playhouse)” (“Directive,” 60). It is revealed that the meaning in Frost’s poems
is not a complicated or complex thing. He has taken the feeling of simplicity and
wholeness that we once felt when we were children, and has brought it back by getting us
so lost we have forgotten all of the details that make our lives confusing and complex as
adults.
The final two lines are actually quite simple when reading “Directive” as a guide to
reading Frost’s poetry; “Here are you waters and your watering place. / Drink and be
whole again beyond confusion” (“Directive,” 61-62). Here are the poems (waters), and
you’ve reached an understanding of how to read them (watering place). Read all of them
this way and you will have this moment Frost calls “beyond confusion”. This is the
feeling we get when we finish a poem and understand the meaning, we have forgotten the
details that confuse us and reached whatever meaning Frost has been trying to convey in
any of his poems.
The last lines of “The Wood-Pile” have the same resonating effect; “To warm the
frozen swamp as best [the woodpile] could / With the slow smokeless burning of decay”
(“The Wood-Pile,” 39-40). The narrator in this poem both realizes that the woodpile is
doing a service to the natural aspect of the woods, however he is also disturbed by it.
“Birches” has an even more similar final message to “Directive” than “The Wood-Pile”
does. The narrator states, “That would be good both going and coming back. One could
do worse than be a swinger of birches” (“Birches,” 58-59). The whole idea of “Directive”
is to get away from the distractions of daily life, Frost ends “Birches” by saying that the
journey away from these distractions and eventually coming back to them is in fact a
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productive way to spend one’s time.
Perhaps Frost wrote “Directive” as a response to incorrect interpretations of his
earlier poems. At first glance, many people view him simply as a man who enjoys
reminiscing and writing about nature. However, “Directive” guides people to the correct
way to interpret the hidden meaning and reach the level of clarity we do as readers when
we fully understand this meaning. When applied to many of Frost’s other poems,
“Directive” makes even more sense, because the reader can use this poem as a guide and
experience how this guide works step by step.