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T.S. Eliot as conceptual innovator
vs. Robert Frost as experimental innovator
T.S. Eliot is a clear example of a conceptual innovator in poetry – a young genius, inspired by literature. Robert Frost, in contrast, was an experimental innovator – a late bloomer, inspired by people around him. The two men’s differing career paths and their differing sources of inspiration reflect two of the key characteristics that distinguish conceptual poets – finders -- from experimental poets, or seekers.
Eliot, for example, composed “Prufrock” just before he turned 23. That’s typical of finders, who tend to achieve early success with a small number of breakthrough works. It’s also typical of conceptual painters such as archetypal finder Picasso, who painted his breakthrough masterpiece at age 26.
Frost followed the basic pattern of a seeker when he wrote his most popular poems at ages 38, 42 and 48. Seekers – whether experimental poets or experimental painters -- tend to achieve success gradually, later in their careers, with no particular work standing out as a major breakthrough. The pattern of Frost’s career comes close to being a middle-aged reflection of painter Paul Cézanne’s, who achieved his greatest successes late in life, painting many masterpieces, not just one or two great works.
Poets’ career patterns came to light when economist David Galenson analyzed 47 anthologies of 20th-century American poetry and the poets’ ages when they wrote the 2,816 poems in those books. Galenson’s focus was on 11 poets – each of them among the century’s greatest, each born between 1870 and 1940, each with poems in the top anthologies, and each with a total of more than 150 entries in the anthologies.
In those volumes, no poem appears more frequently than “Prufrock,” which is the only work by Eliot in the list Galenson created of the top 20 most reprinted poems. Eliot’s other monumental achievement, “The Waste Land” (published when he was 34 and often cited as a landmark in modern literature), likely would have been on the list too – if only it weren’t 15 pages long. The anthologies contain 166 copies of poems by Eliot, nearly half of them written before age 32. As a typical conceptual innovator, Eliot did his best work as a young man, but his more mature work was also excellent, including the “Four Quartets,” published at age 54. His best ears – in terms of numbers of times his poems were chosen for anthologies -- were 22, 27, 30, 39 and 47. That pattern is like Picasso again – not just the typical finder’s youthful peak, but also Picasso’s many lesser decades of still-brilliant work.
If you wanted to pit Frost against Eliot in a poetry competition, Frost would easily win the contest for the most total entries in the anthologies. His total is 503 -- about three times what Eliot achieved -- including three poems in the top 20. That’s a typical pattern of mid- to late-career productivity for a successful seeker. The three Frost poems in the top 20 are from ages 38, 42 and 48 ¬ “Mending Wall,” “The Road Not Taken,” and the most frequently reprinted, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” The anthologies contain no poems that Frost wrote before age 32. Based on the anthologists’ choices, Frost’s best years as a writer were ages 42, 49, 54, 62 and 68.
Conceptually innovative poets are like conceptually innovative painters.
Experimentally innovative poets are like experimentally innovative painters.
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