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Frost on style

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I used to say “Style is content,” which is to say how you say a thing is the thing you say. I guess that’s what makes me a poet.

I still think that is true, though lately I’ve backed off on it a little. This letter from Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer, dated March 10, 1924, helps me explain why (emphasis mine):

Since last I saw you I have come to the conclusion that style in prose or verse is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying.* Let the sound of Stevenson go through your mind empty and you will realize that he never took himself other than as an amusement. Do the same with Swinburne and you will see that he took himself as a wonder. Many sensitive natures have plainly shown by their style that they took themselves lightly in self-defense. They are the ironists. Some fair to good writers have no style and so leave us ignorant of how they take themselves. But that is the one important thing to know: because on it depends our likes and dislikes. A novelist seems to be the only kind of writer who can make a name without a style: which is only one more reason for not bothering with the novel. I am not satisfied to let it go with the aphorism that the style is the man. The man’s ideas would be some element then of his style. So would his deeds. But I would narrow the definition. His deeds are his deeds; his ideas are his ideas. His style is the way he carries himself toward his ideas and deeds.

I think maybe dry wit is about the same as irony and so I think maybe I’m guilty. Although I have a great fear of bathos. (And all the other musketeers, not to be confused with mouseketeers, who are even more frightening.)

“Humor,” says Frost in that same letter, “is the most engaging cowardice.”

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