University of Virginia Library

Robert Frost's "Kitty Hawk"
by
Joan St.C. Crane

While Robert Frost's Collected Poems (1930) was in work at the Spiral Press in the fall of 1929, Joseph Blumenthal, founder and operator of the press, had the idea to print Frost's poem, 'Christmas Trees' (printed first in Mountain Interval, 1916), as a Christmas keepsake booklet for himself and Frost's publisher, Henry Holt and Company, in an edition of 275 copies. 'Christmas Trees' and subsequent similar printings of Frost poems in the Decembers of 1934 and 1935 were forerunners to an annual custom of Robert Frost Christmas booklets by the Spiral Press which continued from 1937 to 1962 with a hiatus between 1939 and 1944. By 1962, the number of copies of the annual printing had increased to 17,055. Of the twenty-five Spiral booklets issued over a period of thirty-four years, sixteen were poems written expressly for the purpose or, at least, were poems previously unpublished. In 1956, Frost provided 'Kitty Hawk,' a poem written in 1954, to be used as the Christmas poem.

Frost wrote three versions of 'Kitty Hawk' over a period of eight years. The first and shortest (128 lines) was used as the 1956 card; the second, much expanded (432 lines), was printed in The Atlantic Monthly (November 1957). A new poem of 64 lines with the title, 'The Great Event is Science. The Great Misgiving, The Fear of God, Is That the Meaning of It Shall Be Lost,' was printed in The Saturday Review (21 March 1959). This poem contained 33 lines excerpted from the second version and 31 new lines. The final version, having 471 lines, was printed in In The Clearing (1962). It incorporates the 64-line poem in its entirety, discards some sections of the second version and contains additional text. In the Frost canon, 'Kitty Hawk' was considered by the poet to be one of his most important later works. The poem is a profession of faith in the spirit of man, in his ultimate spiritual triumph over the phenomena of creation. The effort to understand and interpret the nature of the universe by means of exploration, enterprise, invention and technology, which Frost called 'duffing into the material' at a talk before the Poetry Society in 1958, lies at the heart of this gradually-evolved poem.

In the examination of the versions of 'Kitty Hawk' that follows, the designations 1 (1956 Christmas card), 2 (Atlantic Monthly), 3 (Saturday Review), and 4 (In The Clearing) are used. All lines cited from version 1 are keyed to the original text. Lines quoted from the later versions are keyed to the numbered text, deriving from 4, that is printed in Edward Connery Lathem's The Poetry of Robert Frost (Barre, Mass.: The Imprint Society, 1971, pp. 428-443).

The themes in the original version were two that fascinated Frost all his life: the phenomenon of flight by man and the belief that the world of men is a place to get away from by any means—love, art, nature, science or religion. As early as 1917, Frost used this conviction as his topic in talks, quoting from 'poems which represented romantic notions of escape from this world by means of scientific inventions and discoveries such as the flying machine of Darius Green. . . .'[1] Frost had met John Townsend Trowbridge at the first meeting of the Poetry Club of New England in 1915 when the author of 'Darius Green and His Flying Machine'[2] was 88. The reasons for Frost's delight in the poem are fairly obvious: it is the tale of an eccentric, visionary, hard-headed Yankee boy whose determination to fly overcomes ridicule, scorn, and a total lack of aerodonetic know-how; who allows, when his flight is accomplished, '"Wal, I like flyin' well enough," / He said; "but the' ain't sich a thunderin' sight / O' fun in 't when ye come to light."'

Robert Frost was 29 years old, a farmer in Derry, N.H., when Wilbur and Orville Wright made their historic 59-second flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C., in 1903. Sometime in the thirties, Frost said to Louis Mertins, 'Anybody who knows even a kindergarten course in my poetry knows that I've been interested in flying ever since Kitty Hawk gave us success under the Wright brothers. . . . I've been trying to do my little stint for the Wrights in deeds and verse a long time. . . . I always remember the die-hards who said nobody could ever fly—there'd be no Darius Green and his flying machine. The newspapers, whose editors always know everything, back at the century's turn said no use to send a man down . . . to Kitty Hawk. You can't cover what can't happen. So, the biggest event of the century, up to then, had nobody to write it up.' Mertins also writes: 'I recall how greatly exercised Frost was over the fact that the encyclopedias were trying to take the honor of the first heavier-than-air flight away from the Wright brothers. "Why," he sputtered, "when all this thing is written, that about Lindburgh and all, there will still remain only the Wright boys, the Columbuses of the air. . . . I wanted to do all I could to help establish them in their rights. So I wrote a poem about our long having wheel rights, wainwrights, and now we've got wingwrights. I want to print it and do what I can to help."'[3] It was this poem, published in A Further Range (1936) with the title, 'The Wrights' Biplane.'

His comparison of the Wrights with Columbus goes back to 1906 when Frost was teaching at the Pinkerton Academy in Derry, N.H. The Clifton Waller Barrett Library at the University of Virginia has in its Robert Frost manuscript holdings a notebook that survives from the Derry period.

In it are notes, apparently intended for a class lesson, in which Frost postulates the importance of the Wrights' achievement in terms of Columbus's voyage: 'Why is he [Columbus] immortal, then? Can't you tell? Well, because he had the faith that so few people are capable of; the faith of an idea. Not for him to feel his way around Africa to Ind[ia]. He launched out into space with the supreme confidence of reason. Great in his confidence, great in his justification. The nearest him [are] among the aviators and the only ones near him are the Wright brothers.'[4]

Frost and Orville Wright met and became friends a few years before the pioneer aviator died in 1948. In the later versions of 'Kitty Hawk' he refers to Orville Wright as 'The Master': 'Once I told the Master, / Later when we met, / I'd been here one night / As a young Alastor / When the scene was set / For some kind of flight / Long before he flew it' [4:50-56]. This reference establishes the milieu of the poem. Frost had been at Kitty Hawk ten years before the historic flight on a personal and emotional 'flight' of his own. Lawrance Thompson (Early Years, pp. 173-189) gives a vivid account of the runaway excursion to the Dismal Swamp in 1894 after Elinor White discouraged his courtship. He tore up his own copy of Twilight (the booklet of poems he had had printed in an edition of two copies only; one for himself and one for Elinor) and bolted. He ended up at Nags Head, near Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks of the North Carolina coast with a party of duck hunters from Elizabeth City, N.C. [1:34-61; 4:100-128], from whose unwanted solicitude he escaped by going down alone to the ocean beach late at night [1:68-70; 4:135-138].

Having evaded the hunters, Frost was shortly accosted by an officer of the Life Saving Service patrolling the beach; a man of evangelical bent who told him the story of Aaron Burr's daughter Theodosia [1:72-94; 4: 139-161]. Frost diverted the discussion by remarking the full moon which reminded him of the lines from Tennyson's 'Morte d'Arthur,' 'On one side lay the Ocean, and on one / Lay a great water, and the moon was full.' This he quoted to his companion [1:97-104; 4:164-169], referring in the first version to Tennyson as 'That old laurel-crowned / Lord of a John Bull.' The encounter produced only a banal exchange and twice the poet claims to have been thwarted on the threshold of poetic expression by the well-meant interference of strangers: 'Getting too befriended, / As so often, ended / Any melancholy / Götterdämmerung / That I might have sung' [4:95-99]. He rationalized that the theme he might have chosen would not have been an universal one since his mood at the time inclined him more to lost causes; his own and those specific to the area of the Outer Banks like the Lost Colony of Roanoke [4:85-94].

In 1954,[5] Frost made another visit to Kitty Hawk with Huntington

Cairns, the lawyer and author who acted as professional advisor to the National Gallery in Washington from 1943 to 1965. Memories stirred by this second visit sixty years later inspired the original Spiral Press Christmas booklet version of the poem. Shortly after the earlier version was printed, however, Frost was working on a much longer (432 lines), more complex treatment of the same themes, extended to incorporate the philosophical implications of space flight. This thesis is explored in an interview with Frost conducted by John Ciardi on the occasion of the poet's eighty-fifth birthday which was published in The Saturday Review (21 March 1959). In the same issue was the new poem, 'The Great Event is Science. The Great Misgiving, The Fear of God, Is That the Meaning of It Shall be Lost,' later incorporated into the final version of 'Kitty Hawk.'[6] In the interview Frost says:

It should be remembered that when this interview was given to Ciardi in 1959, the first earth satellite, Sputnik I, had been successfully placed in orbit by the Russians in October, 1957, matched by the American achievement in January, 1958. The first manned space flights were about to become

a reality in 1961. The space programs were innocent of philosophical justification and Frost set about filling the void with his 'emblematic ditty.'

Versions 2 and 4 emphasize a competitive spirit that emerges first in the conversation with Orville Wright [4:59-63]. In version 2, Wright does not respond to the question about 'the lie / That he wasn't first?' [4:64-65]. In version 4, Frost was 'glad he laughed' [4:66] and proceeds into a brief historical background of the controversy that raged over the Wrights' claim to the first powered flight against earlier claims such as that of the Frenchman, Clément Ader, in 1890 and 1897.[7] But beyond the spirit of competition, he discerns an historical pattern of Westerners inheriting 'A design for living / Deeper into matter' [4:225-227]. The real event in history is the collective occupation of mankind to venture always deeper into the material, overshadowing the spirit of competition which nevertheless supplies the abrasive element that keeps us striving. This is exemplified by the space race between America and Russia which Frost seems to minimize [4:258-259, 263-269]. Yet, to remind us of our earthbound nature, Frost expostulates that 'Nothing can go up / But it must come down / Earth is still our fate' [4:306-308]; a statement reflecting Darius Green's pained observation on the inevitable conclusion of any flight by man. Nevertheless, regardless of the puniness of our first move against the vastness of the universe, it is a pre-destined beginning: 'Don't discount our powers; / We have made a pass / At the infinite' [4:361-363] and, in doing so, we have made ourselves 'the Capital / Of the universe' [4:376-377] and begin to fulfill the potential of the mens animi. What was called 'a godless adventure' in version 2 and an 'unblessed adventure' in version 3, becomes in the final version 'Our instinctive venture' into what censurious 'pulpiteers' call the material [4:213-216].

If Robert Frost felt that he had missed the flight in 1894, version 4 of the poem aspires to be his 'emblematic ditty'; this time reflecting man's greatest adventure, the momentous flight into space. 'Kitty Hawk' is Frost's affirmation of mankind attempting the infinite and hazarding thereby the death of the spirit. On the occasion of the party to celebrate his last birthday in Washington, D.C., 26 March 1962, Frost responded to the demonstration of respect by quoting these lines from 'Kitty Hawk,' which are imperative to his personally evolved philosophy [4:219-224]:

II
Textual Collation of the Versions of "Kitty Hawk"

[Texts collated are 1: earliest printing, Spiral Press Christmas booklet for 1956; 2: Atlantic Monthly (November 1957, pp. 52-56); 3: Saturday Review (21 March 1959, p. 18); 4: In The Clearing (NY: Holt, 1962, pp. 41-58); 5: a typescript of version 2 in the Clifton Waller Barrett Library, University of Virginia, 10 pp., inscribed by RF to Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, dated 9 September 1957. Line reference is to 4. Also collated are two reprint texts; one deriving from number 2 and printed in Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1958 (NY: Schulte, 1959, pp. 69-83), designated 2a below, and the other deriving from 4 and printed in The Poetry of Robert Frost (1971), pp. 428-443; edited by Edward Connery Lathem. The Anthology is true to its copy excepting one misprint at line 100 (see below). The Lathem edition lists all emendations made to 4.]

• 3 Who knows but a great] 4; omit 1; Even a rather great 2,5
• 4 Emblematic] 2,4,5; A prophetic 1
• 7-8 Out . . . City] 2,4,5; omit 1
• 9-10 ago. / I] 2,4,5; ago. / It was then as though / I could hardly wait / To degravitate. / Habit couldn't hold me. / I 1
• 11 Fate] 2,4,5; fate 1
• 14 think] 2,4,5; say 1
• 14 poor—] 2,4,5; poor&c.rat; 1
• 16 where&c.rat;] 2,4,5; where. 1
• 17-101 I . . . among / Some] 2,4,5 plusmn; (see 18-100); Still I must have known, / Something in me told me, / Flight would first be flown, / It is on my tongue / To say first be sprung, / Into the sublime / Off these sands of time / For his hour glass. / I felt in me wing / To have up and flung / An immortal fling. / I might well have soared, / I might well have sung, / Though my bent was toward / Little more, alas, / Than Cape Hatteras; / And I fell among / Some 1
• 18 Faster than my tread——] 4; Down along the coast 2,5
• 19 the] 4; a 2,5
• 19 crumpled,] 4; crumpled&c.rat; 2,5
• 19 better&c.rat;] 4,5; better— 2
• 21 I . . . thrown.] 4; I to waste had thrown—— / Given up for dead. 2,5
• 22 boast,] 4; boast&c.rat; 2,5
• 25 claim] 4; say 2,5
• 29 the] 4; its 2,5
• 37 Taurus,] 4; Taurus&c.rat; 2,5
• 40-45 It . . . unknown] 4; I felt in me wing / To have up and flung / A heroic fling; / And might well have sung / The initial flight / That was to be flown 2,5
• 49-50 hourglass. / Once] 4; hourglass. / That initial flight / I can see now might / Well have been my own. / Once 2,5
• 50 Master,] 4; master&c.rat; 2,5
• 51 met,] 4; met&c.rat; 2,5
• 52 I'd been here one night] 4; I had been here too 2,5
• 55 For . . . flight] 4; For the flight he flew 2,5
• 57-60 For . . . original?] 4; Would he mind had I / Had him beaten to it? / Could he tell me why / Be original? 2,5
• 65-66 That . . . laughed.] 4; Someone else was first? / He saw I was daffing. / He took this from me. / Still it was no laughing / Matter I could see. / He made no reply. 2,5

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247




• 67 was] 4; was 2,5
• 69 overlong] 2,5; over long 4
• 72-73 wrong. / Of] 4; wrong. / That was why this craft / Man was first to waft / Like a kiss to God / Stayed so long abroad / In repository / And appreciation / With a foreign nation. / Of 2; Wrong. / That . . . craft / Gas was first to waft / Off the earth to God / Stayed . . . nation. / Of 5
• 74-75 Is . . . brave,] 4; Is the theft of glory, 2,5
• 78 But the] 4; 'Twas a 2,5
• 78-79 story&c.rat; / Has . . . redressed.] 4; story. / But we needn't rave: / All has been redressed. 2,5
• 81 had any] 4; might have one 2,5
• 82 runway's] 4; Runway's 2,5
• 84 is] 4; was 2,5
• 88 dark Hatteras&c.rat;] 4; Cape Hatteras, 2,5
• 89 sad] 4; else 2,5
• 94-95 And . . . folly / Getting] 2,4; And even greater folly. / Anyway the thing / Is I didn't sing. / Getting 5
• 94.1 space] 4; no space 2,5
• 98 Götterdämmerung] 4; omit 2,5
• 99 That I might] 4; I was to 2,5
• 100 I . . . among] 4; And I fell among 1; For I fell among 2,5 (2a: felt among)
• 105 Or] 4; And 1,2,5
• 105 demijohn] 2,4; demi-john 1,5
• 106-107 (Need . . . flask?)] 2,4,5; omit 1
• 108 duck&c.rat;] 2,4,5; duck, 1
• 114 But their lack] 4; Being out 1,2,5
• 115 gay&c.rat;] 4; gay, 1,2,5
• 119-120 revelry—— / All] 4; revelry; / Even at their height / All 1; revelry / Even to the height— / All 2,5
• 129 Something] 2,4,5; All which 1
• 132 themselves] 2,4; someone 1; them feel 5
• 144 where-all] 1,4; whereall 2,5
• 152 for:] 2,4,5; for; 1
• 160 daughter:] 2,4,5; daughter. 1
• 163 the] 2,4,5; our 1
• 163 walk,] 2,4,5; walk; 1
• 166 Of . . . sound;] 2,4,5; (Of the inner sound). 1
• 167 "And . . . full,"] 4; &c.rat;And . . . full,&c.rat; 1,2,5
• 168 said&c.rat;] 2,4,5; said, 1
• 169 I aptly] 2,4,5; right there 1
• 169-170 quoted . . . . And its] 4; quoted, / That old laurel-crowned / Lord of a John Bull. / The moon's 1,2,5
• 171 overhead,] 2,4,5; overhead&c.rat; 1
• 172 Small&c.rat;] 2,4,5; Small, 1
• 175 Kitty . . . Kitty,] 4; omit 1,2,5
• 177 selfsame] 4; self-same 1,2,5
• 178 men&c.rat;] 2,4,5; men, 1
• 179 upon] 4; twice on 1,2,5
• 179 pity,] 2,4,5; pity: 1
• 180 Equally profound] 2,4,5; omit 1
• 181-182 For . . . drowned.] 2,4,5; For a daughter drowned, / For a son astray. 1
• 182.1-14 Kitty Hawk . . . off.] 1,2,5plusmn;; omit 4
• 182.2 dismay.] 2,5; dismay, 1
• 182.3 Men . . . away.] 2,5; omit 1

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248




• 182.4 And] 2,5; But 1
• 182.7 Man's small] 2,5; mankind's 1
• 182.8 his unsuccess] 2,5; for their distress 1
• 182.14 [end of 1]
• 185 Beach] 4; beach 2,5
• 189 this] 4; the 2,5
• 190 Someday] 4; To a flying 2,5
• 193 fly.] 4; fly, 2,5
• 199 (aliquid)] 4,5; (aliquid) 2
• 200 you,] 4; you&c.rat; 2,5
• 205 yeoman] 4; yeoman's 2,5
• 207 there&c.rat;] 4; there, 2,5
• 212 Then I saw it all] 4; This we're certain of, / All we do and try / All we really love / Is to signify. 2; This . . . of / All . . . signify. 2a,5
• 212.1 space] 4; no space 2,5
• 214 instinctive venture] 4; godless adventure 2,5; unblessed adventure 3
• 215-216 Into . . . material] 3,4; omit 2,5 (see l. 218)
• 217 When] 3,4; Since 2,5
• 218 tree.] 3,4; tree / Into what they call / the Material. 2,5 (see ll. 215-216)
• 226 for] 4; of 2,3,5
• 227 matter——] 3,4; matter&c.rat; 2,5
• 228-229 &c.rat;Not . . . misgiving.&c.rat;] 3,4; (Not . . . misgiving.) 2,5
• 228 due] 3,4; some 2,5
• 229 a great] 3,4; the soul's 2,5
• 230-245 All . . . emulation] 2,4,5; omit 3
• 235 matter)&c.rat;] 4; matter), 2,5
• 241 meditation.] 4; meditation&c.rat; 2,5
• 242 What . . . fuss] 4; And made such a fuss 2,5
• 243 us?] 4; us. 2,5
• 246-257 Spirit . . . material.] 3,4; omit 2,5
• 247 it's] 4; its 3
• 251 We may] 4; Why not 3
• 258-308 In . . . fate.] 4; omit 2,5
• 258-401 In . . . think.] 4; omit 3
• 320 'Twas] 4; Was 2,5
• 337 God] 4; he 2,5
• 338 We] 4; I 2,5
• 364 it, . . . were,] 4; it&c.rat; . . . were&c.rat; 2,5
• 373 That's how we became] 2,4; Was that how we came 5
• 374-375 small, / Justly] 4; small, / Easy to asperse / For its size and worse, / Justly 2,5
• 377 universe.] 4; universe? 2,5
• 389 this] 4; the 2,5
• 394.1 no space] 4; space 2,5
• 402 Pilot,] 2,4,5; Pilot&c.rat; 3
• 404 swoop,] 4; swoop&c.rat; 2,3,5
• 407 backyard] 3,4,5; back yard 2
• 419-436 Those . . . expressed.] 3,4; But let's get this straight: / There creation is. / More or less control / Of it is the whole / Business of the soul. 2,5
• 426 or] 4; and 3
• 436 [end of 3]
• 436.1 THE MIXTURE MECHANIC] 4; omit 2,5
• 437 This wide] 4; And this 2; Yes this 5
• 438 or] 4; and 2,5
• 439-440 approve / Of them] 2,4; approve / Of the sun and moon / Keeping 5

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249




• 440-441 move. / Ours] 4,5; move, / Be they stars or moon. / Ours 2
• 446 That's the tune,] 4; that's the tune&c.rat; 2; that's the tune, 5
• 448 curd,] 4; curd&c.rat; 2,5
• 450 Action] 4; Motion 2,5
• 457 divine,] 4; divine&c.rat; 2,5
• 458 —baton,] 4; —baton&c.rat; 2,5
• 461 She's] 4,5; We're 2
• 464 Some . . . Satan,] 4; Some consider Satan, 2,5

Notes