Eleanor Wilner: “Like a piece of ice…” (January 2007)

“Like a piece of ice on a hot stove,” Robert Frost wrote, “a poem must ride on its own melting.”  Eleanor Wilner explores this dictum, as it applies to the making of poems and also to their content. Applied to a poem’s composition, it is a poetic version of what’s known in physics as “phase change,” as one thing becomes another, releasing energy and insight in the process. Then, looking at poems by Frost, Nemerov, Levertov and Glück, she looks at how differently poets may conceive of “melting” in personal, mortal ways.