Without being overly unctuous (excessively polite or flattering) I want to say I like Sam's new opening intro and music to Great Weekends as she steps out of her Brooklyn apartment with her travel bags embarking on a new journey and gesturing us to come along. Watching all the new shows every Saturday night is like a festive warm up before I hit the nightclub scene. Because of my past unctuousness, such as being infatuated and star struck at the same time, I promised myself not to reply to her posts anymore unless called upon. But my promise has been easy to keep for I don't recall seeing a post from her lately. I fear my unctuousness might be partly to blame. If so, then I want to reassure I now feel detoxified with stable boundaries and my promise will be proceeding forthrightly.

Last year I've become a big fan of the travel channel's Ghost Adventures seen on Friday night and I waited with much anticipation to their new season that recently began. Along with Sam it's now one of my favorite shows. I love the passion that the host Zak Bagans brings to every episode, and with his confrontational style to take on any hostile ghosts in order to capture any reaction from them on audio or film. I also get a big kick out of watching Man vs. Food with Adam Richmond. He has a fired up passion that I enjoy too, but instead of it being directed at ghosts he prefers the challenge of seeing how much his gluttonous stomach can take on. I know these are not shows of high intellectual quality but I enjoy them. Hmm, if Sam had to be a guest star in one of these two shows I wonder whom she would choose to participate in. Would she prefer facing ghosts in a creepy setting with no lights on or trying to eat 7 pounds of food in one sitting? I have a hunch she would appeal to be on Anthony Bourdain instead. Personally, I would love to be in all of them. Sign me up Mr. Producer!

I will now focus on my topic. Because I haven't posted for a good length of time I decided to use this 40th anniversary of the moon landing to share an unpublished poem by Robert Frost that has to do with man's race to the moon and breaking the sound barrier. If anyone wonders why I bother to post any of Robert Frost poems in SB's forum is because she did refer to him as a favorite once while in Connecticut when doing a Great Hotels episode and that I enjoy spending a lot of time studying him. I am mindful this topic is not related to travel (other than to outer space) or any of Sam's show and only wish to honor this 40th anniversary occasion, while also paying tribute to Robert Frost's final unpublished poem that is not easily accessible. I apologize if I appear out of place.

From the Library of America, a nonprofit publisher, in their 1995 book "Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays" is an essay called "The Future of Man" originally presented at The Future of Man symposium (a conference to discuss a particular academic subject) sponsored on the dedication of its headquarters building at 375 Park Avenue in New York on September 29, 1959. I thought this essay would be a good lead in to his final unpublished poem called "The Prophets Really Prophesy as Mystics / The Commentators Merely by Statistics" written in 1962, basically because of how he describes himself as a prophet in both and for further insight into his thinking that lead to this poem. I also decided to include "A Never Naught Song" from his final book because of the word Yggdrasil being in this essay as well. I think he might have been asked by the symposium to think like a prophet to give his opinion on the future of man and so why he referred to himself as such, or was really being literal, I'm not sure.

The Uncollected Poems are presented in chronological order and this 1962 poem appears to be the last one Frost ever finished writing before he died on January 29, 1963 shortly after midnight from a pulmonary embolism. In the chronology the doctors said his mind remained clear up to the end.

I think the poems are quite good and are in keeping with how he described his "Take Something Like A Star" afterword poem to the 1949 book "Complete Poems," and his final 1962 book "In The Clearing," would become when he comments: "I like to mingle science and spirit here - as I do so deliberately in my new book." Thus, I assume he wrote this unpublished final poem AFTER his final book came out because it was certainly good enough to have been INCLUDED with it. And the poem's title might be the only time he had a title that rhymed like two different sentences. I liked the poem so much that I memorized it a long time ago, as with many others.

I wrote down some definitions beforehand that I had to look up for myself in case you need to be reminded of them (or learn for the first time) as I certainly did.

Enjoy!

BLACKGUARD - to talk about or address in abusive terms.
IMPORTUNATE - troublesomely urgent: overly persistent in request or demand.
LIBATION - to pour as an offering; an act of pouring a liquid as a sacrifice (as to a deity).
YGGDRASIL (I think pronounce Ig-dra-sil) - a huge ash tree in Norse mythology that overspreads the world and binds the earth, hell, and heaven together.

THE FUTURE OF MAN

It's the word "challenge" that interests me, of course - the challenge of the future to the prophet - and I am the prophet. I am going to tell you about the future - I'm not going to advocate the future; I'm going to tell you what it will be.

The standing challenge - the great challenge - is of man's originality to his law and order, to his government. And that will always be the challenge - that of man's energy and daring and originality to his law and order. That means that looking ahead into the future with my eyes shut - I see government paired with government for the championship of its era - to see after whom the period will be named, in this era for instance, us or the Russ. Unfortunately, we haven't a very good name for ourselves. All my South American friends object to our calling ourselves America - we shall have to call ourselves "us," to rhyme with "Russ."

Add to that, that there will always be an issue for the two powers to pair off on, and the Lord is the Great Provider; He'll provide the issue. There's always been an issue, a great issue, like the one between Persia and Greece, Rome and Carthage, Christendom and Islam - for every period. We see a great issue today. I never can bear to blackguard an enemy; I like him to be an intelligible enemy, a worthy antagonist.

Next, are we going to be another kind of people? Young people of our day, in studying anthropology and listening to the anthropologists, think it's such an amusing distance between the monkeys and us that it will only be another amusing distance from us to the superman. It's a field day for all comic strip teasers, you see, every man can make his own comic strip. Let me tell you about that - I know just what's going to happen or not happen. Our self-consciousness is terminal – there's nothing beyond us. Life in us has reached a self-consciousness that terminates the growth.

I saw a little while ago a list of all the thoughts man has had - published in Chicago, I think. There weren't over a hundred or two. I looked for the word evolution, and there it was. I looked for the word growth, the plain word growth, and there it wasn't. Apparently in Chicago growth is not an idea but I take it that evolution comes under the head of growth. Only it has a strange illusory way of making you think it goes on forever. But all growth is limited - the tree of life is limited like a maple tree or an oak tree - they have a certain height, and they all have a certain life-length. And our tree, the tree Yggdrasil, has reached its growth. It doesn’t have to fall down because it's stopped growing. It will go on blossoming and having its seasons – I'd give it another hundred or two hundred million years. Make that anything you please. It'll go on leaving out and blooming into successions of the doubleness, I foresee, just like the doubleness of the sexes. There'll be two parties always to it, some way. I hope that this tree is self-fertilizing - I guess I hadn't thought of that - and it doesn't need another tree besides it, and in itself has all the doubleness I ask, good and evil, two sexes, one of THEM good and the other evil.

I wish the young people would relieve themselves of the responsibility of attending to the future of our height. There's nothing coming beyond us. The tree Yggdrasil has reached its growth.

Then I want to say another thing about the god who provides the great issues. He's a god of waste, magnificent waste. And waste is another name for generosity of not always being intent on our own advantage, nor too importunate even for a better world. We pour out a libation to him as a symbol of the waste we share in - participate in. Pour it on the ground and you've wasted it; pour it into yourself and you've doubly wasted it. But all in the cause of generosity and relaxation of self interest.

But I think I said enough about it. There are many details that I had in mind, but I don't want to be too long about it. The point is that the challenge will always be there between man's originality and his law and order, his government. I sometimes think the scientists have got themselves scared; they're afraid they'll run away with themselves they are so original. They needn't worry; the executives will take care of them.

1959

PROMETHEAN - of, relating to, or resembling Prometheus (a Titan who according to Greek myth stole fire from heaven, gave it to man, and was consequently put to extreme torture by Zeus,) his experiences, or his art; esp. daringly original or creative.
AVAIL - advantage toward attainment of a goal or purpose.
LEVITY - the quality or state of being light in weight: Buoyancy.
SCRUFF - the back of the neck.
HAWSER - a large rope for towing, mooring, or securing a ship.
VIVA VOCE - expressed or conducted by word of mouth: oral.
GORDIAN KNOT - 1: a knot tied by Gordius, king of Phrygia, held to be capable of being united only by the future ruler of Asia, and cut by Alexander the Great with his sword. 2: an intricate problem; esp. a problem insoluble in its own terms.

The Prophets Really Prophesy as Mystics
The Commentators Merely by Statistics

With what unbroken spirit naive science
Keeps hurling our Promethean defiance
From this atomic ball of rotting rock
At the Divine Safe's combination lock.

In our defiance we are still defied.
But have not I, as prophet, prophesied:
Sick of our circling round and round the sun
Something about the trouble will be done.

Now that we've found the secret out of weight,
So we can cancel it however great,
Ah, what avail our lofty engineers
If we can’t take the planet by the ears,

Or by the poles or simply by the scruff,
And saying simply we have had enough
Of routine and monotony on earth,
Where nothing's going on but death and birth

And man's of such a limited longevity,
Now in the confidence of new-found levity
(Our gravity has been our major curse)
We'll cast off hawser for the universe

Taking along the whole race for a ride
(Have I not prophesied and prophesied?)
All voting viva voce where to go,
The noisier because they hardly know

Whether to seek a scientific sky
Or wait and go to Heaven when they die,
In other words to wager their reliance
On plain religion or religious science,

They need to crash the puzzle of their lot
As Alexander crashed the Gordian knot,
Or as we crashed the barrier of sound
To beat the very world's speed going round.

Yet what a charming earnest world it is,
So modest we can hardly hear it whizz,
Spinning as well as running on a course
It seems too bad to steer it off by force.

1962

And when speaking at Dartmouth College in 1962 just before Robert Frost began to recite "A Never Naught Song" he lead into it by saying, "Principally - I was thinking of the extravagance of the universe, you know, what an EXTRAVAGANT universe it is. And the most extravagant thing in it, as far as we know, is man - the most wasteful, spending thing in it - in all his luxuriance, you know. And how stirring it is, the sun and everything. Take a telescope and look far as you will, you know. How much of a universe was wasted just to produce puny us. It's wonderful, it fills you with awe."

As with his two lines "Clear from hydrogen / All the way to men" expresses this awe of the universe. And in the line "To conflict and pair" Frost is referring to atoms trying to form together. I also noticed that each line has exactly 5 syllables in them.

Frost goes on: "And then, I could go right on with pretty near everything I've done. You know, there's always this element of extravagance. It's like snapping a whip. Are you there? Are you still on? Are you with it? Or has it snapped you off? And then this is one in thought - a recent one, another kind of tone altogether."

NAUGHT – old use: nothing.
DISCRETE - Individually distinct.
HYDROGEN - The simplist and lightest of the elements.
BOLE - The trunk of a tree.
GIST - Essence.
INFRA - Below; beneath.
GUISE - An outward form, appearance, or manner.
NIL - Nothing.

A Never Naught Song

There was never naught,
There was always thought.
But when noticed first
It was fairly burst
Into having weight.
It was in a state
Of atomic One.
Matter was begun -
And in fact complete,
One and yet discrete
To conflict and pair.
Everything was there,
Every single thing
Waiting was to bring,
Clear from hydrogen
All the way to men.
It is all the tree
It will ever be,
Bole and branch and root
Cunningly minute.
And this gist of all
Is so infra-small
As to blind our eyes
To its every guise
And so render nil
The whole Yggdrasill.
Out of coming-in
Into having been!
So the picture's caught
Almost next to naught
But the force of thought.

"And my extravagance would go on from there to say that people think that life is a RESULT of certain atoms coming together, see, instead of being the CAUSE that brings the atoms together. See, there's something to be said about that in the utter, utter extravagant way."

Whew !!!