Saturday, September 29, 2007

playing tennis in the Pittsburgh wilderness

Robert Frost dismisses modern poetry in Newsweek (January 30, 1956, p. 56):

Match Point: In Pittsburgh, 81-year-old poet ROBERT FROST strolled into educational station WQED for a televised chat and poetry reading with a group of fifteen high-school students, told them "Pittsburgh is still a kind of wilderness city . . . There are places where rocks stick out... Lots of places where you can't run a lawn mower...," got so interested that he ignored off-camera cues and overshot his scheduled hour of air time by a full 55 minutes. Four-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Frost's tart dismissal of 'free' verse: I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down.