Frost Discusses, Reads Poetry At Sanders

"You're not going to study your way into a love of poetry," Robert Frost told the enthralled multitudes at Sanders Theatre yesterday afternoon. Not formal training but education "by hook and by crook" is necessary to become a good night reader--a reader who can fall in love at first sight.

"The purpose of all purposes in man is not a rational one but an instinctive one. It is love at first sight--love an idea, of a girl, of a cause." The assertion of purpose is non-rational; "it's a great gamble, but the work is play for great stakes."

Physicists will admit that the Universe "is the Thing of Things with lots of little balls that go around in rings," Frost said, quoting from one of his poems. However, the scientist rejects the idea that there could be any purpose before man arrived on the scene. And for the scientist, he added, "man's purpose was rather confused until Darwin came along."

If man has a purpose, then there must have been a purpose in creating him, Frost maintained, and "I have a shrewd suspicion--just a shrewd suspicion mind you--that there is an ultimate purpose for man." In order to demonstrate this theme in his poetry, Frost read a varied selection.

Beginning with Revelation, "a little piece I wrote 1000 years ago," he read and recited a series which culminated with Accidentally on Purpose. "Whose purpose was it, his, or hers, or its? I'll leave it to the scientific wits." A departure from the theme to Frost's famous rendition of the Cow That Jumped Over the Moon provided a light note.

Frost is often asked whether he hates anything. "Yes," he said, "I hate people who ask me if I'm still writing poetry. That judgment is not for me to make."