Range Finding by Robert Frost
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44271/range-finding
I think Robert Frost’s poem, “Range Finding” is deceptively simple in many ways but still thought provoking.
First of all, you can identify it as a Petrarchan Sonnet because of the eight-line then pivot and six-line structure. A Petrarchan Sonnet will typically discuss an emotional dilemma in the first eight lines and then line nine is called the "volta" in Italian - the turning point and then the dilemma gets resolved in the last six lines (typically).
Sonnets are usually about some great theme or great love. Petrarch wrote a whole book of them to this woman named Laura that he fell in love with after church one day but never actually met. He wrote poems about her for decades after she died.
The title, "Range Finding" is worth noting. A range finder is a device for measuring the distance between a weapon and the targets it hits and the poem is exploring the flight of a bullet on its way to kill a human soldier but it is examines all the "collateral damage" it is doing on the way. In other words, the poem is trying to ascertain just what a single bullet in a modern war might be destroying and who it might likely be devastating.
In the first eight lines, Frost uses the bullet’s trajectory through an inch or two of meadow to explore the possibilities. We might call what he observes “micro-collateral damage” because the effects are registered on a spider, the spider’s web, a flower, and a butterfly. At the risk of committing a serious act of apophenia (seeing connections where they do not exist in reality) I think it is entirely possible that Frost is not just talking about butterflies when he talks about butterflies here.
“The battle rent a cobweb diamond strung”
The word “rent” speaks of a violent tearing apart of a web (think metaphorically here of how war destroys human communities). The reference to the web being “diamond strung” no doubt can refer to the way that a cobweb will collect drops of water that sparkle in the sun but one can also see the obvious deeper meaning that speaks to how war destroys wealth.
But the bullet’s impact is not just on webs and wealth. It also cuts down life and beauty.
“The stricken flower bent double and so hung.”
The following is the dictionary definition of “flower”
flow·er /ˈflou(ə)r/ noun
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- the seed-bearing part of a plant, consisting of reproductive organs (stamens and carpels) that are typically surrounded by a brightly colored corolla (petals) and a green calyx (sepals).
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- the finest individuals out of a number of people or things.
I suspect but do not know that Frost understands that the image of the flower he has chosen has a literal meaning and a deeper meaning. I am tempted to see Frost making an allusion to John McCrae’s famous WWI poem “In Flanders Fields” about the dead soldiers of WWI lying in the fields like dead poppies:
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
The fact that Frost publishes this poem in 1920, a year after the war ended is not inconsequential.
But it is not simply the dead flower that is affected by this battle’s bullet. The butterfly, who may not itself be dead can be seen clinging to the flower as it lay on the ground. It is not hard to imagine this butterfly representing all those who expected a son or a brother to come back “soul-clinging” to their fallen dead.
A butterfly its fall had dispossessed
A moment sought in air his flower of rest,
Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung.
Thus the first eight lines of the poem explores just what the range of a war's devastation is? How far does war’s actual impact reach? And then we arrive at line nine – the “volta” in a Petrarchan Sonnet. The last six lines of this poem return to the experience of the spider who feels a slight vibration in his well-constructed web and comes out to get the dinner he thinks will be waiting for him.
On the bare upland pasture there had spread
O'ernight 'twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread
And straining cables wet with silver dew.
A sudden passing bullet shook it dry.
The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly,
But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.
Alas, what the spider thought was a fly was a bullet passing through on its way to kill someone. This war has inconvenienced his evening meal. Frost describes the spider as “sullen” as he discovers that he won’t be eating what he thought he would be eating.
I find myself wondering if that spider represents all the people (in America) whose interactions with this devastating European war amounted to problems with rationed beef or sugar or butter. As Frost explores the effects of war through this one patch of meadow in a war torn country, he may be reflecting that its impact in some places was devastating and in others, hardly felt at all. His poem is literally “range finding.”
I wish Robert Frost were here and I could ask him if this poem is about what I think it is about.
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