The Breath of Parted Lips: Voices from the Robert Frost Place, Volume 1

Foreword by Donald Hall

Book of the Year, Gold Award, 2001

A collection of 130 poems contributed by Frost Place residents, many of whom have risen to prominence. Some contributors’ poems were written during their tenures on the farm. Such poets as Robert Hass, Gary Miranda, Mary Jo Salter, Cleopatra Mathis, Denis Johnson and Stanley Plumly explore the depth and breadth of their time spent in Frost’s New Hampshire. Eminent poet Donald Hall wrote the foreword and includes a cache of Frost’s poems from Mountain Interval.

This book collects the poems of 24 prominent American poets selected to live in Robert Frost’s Franconia, New Hampshire, home: Julie Agoos, Sharon Bryan, Robert Cording, Mark Cox, John Engels, Kathy Fagan, Christopher Gilbert, David Graham, Mark Halliday, Robert Hass, Denis Johnson, Cleopatra Mathis, William Matthews, Gary Miranda, Stanley Plumly, Katha Pollitt, Pattiann Rogers, Mary Ruefle, Mary Jo Salter, Sherod Santos, Jeffrey Skinner, Luci Tapahonso, Sue Ellen Thompson, Rosanna Warren.

Things My Grandfather Must Have Said

I want to die in the wintertime,
make the ground regret it,
make the backhoe sweat.

January.  Blue Monday
after the holiday weekend.
I want it to be hard on everybody.

I want everyone to have a headache
and the traffic to be impossible.
Back I up for miles, Jesus.

I want steam under the hood, bad directions,
cousins lost, babies crying, and sleet.
I want a wind so heavy their umbrellas howl.

And give me some birds, pigeons even,
anything circling for at least half an hour,
and plastic tulips and a preacher who stutters.

“Uh” before every word of Psalm 22.
I want to remind them just how bad things are.
Spell my name wrong on the stone, import

Earthworms fat as Aunt Katie’s arms
and put them under the folding chairs.
And I want a glass coffin,

I want to be wearing the State of Missouri
string tie that no one else liked…God,
I hope the straps break

and I fall in with a thud.  I hope
the shovel slips out of my son’s hands.
I want them to remember I don’t feel anything.

I want the food served straight from my garden.
I want the head of the table set.  I want
everyone to get a pennant that says,

“Gramps was the greatest,”
and a complete record of my mortgage payments
in every thank-you note.

And I want to keep receiving mail for 13 years,
all the bills addressed to me,
old friends calling every other month

to wonder how I am.
Then I want an earthquake or rising water table,
the painful exhumation of my remains.

I want to do it all again.

I want to die the day before something truly
important happens and have my grandson say:
What would he have thought of that.

I want you all to know how much I loved you.
                                                             —Mark Cox

Frost wrote, “Young poetry is the breath of parted lips. For the spirit to survive, the mouth must find how to firm and not to harden.” In Franconia’s Frost Place, young poets learn to firm their mouths without hardening their hearts . . . Great poems were written in this house.
— Donald Hall

August 2001
387 pp
Trade paper – 6 X 9.5
$28
978-0-9678856-2-9