When October rolls around, I always celebrate its arrival by reading a poem I've known and loved since childhood.
“When the Frost is On the Punkin” is, to my mind, James Whitcomb Riley at his evocative homespun best. It was also one of my father’s favorite poems. Each year, when the weather began to cool and leaves commenced to show their paintbox hues, Dad would invariably grin at me across the breakfast table and begin quoting the verses. I could quote half of them back to him by the time I was in grade school.
The rural scenes and situations the poem detailed were of another time and place, plucked from a way of life I knew nothing whatsoever about…at least not firsthand. James Whitcomb Riley was born in a log cabin in rural Indiana in 1849. Both my parents were raised on hill-country farms in eastern Kentucky in the early-1900s. Yet the word pictures Riley so wonderfully painted were almost identical to memories they shared with me daily in song, stories, food, and cultural attitude. I naturally grew up as countrified as if I’d been born to it in actuality.
When Riley talked about the “kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock,” I could hear that fantailed bird loud and clear. When he mentioned “fodder in the shock,” or wrote of a “feller leaving the house, bareheaded, as he goes out to feed the stock,” I could, through vicarious history, identify wholeheartedly. What’s more, I knew firsthand about apples “poured around the cellar-floor in red and yaller heaps.” Dad always spread several bushels of apples out this way, every autumn, on the cool concrete floor of the basement’s coal bin. They kept well there until at least the end of winter.
I liked the way Riley wrote, the way he used language. The tongue-testing rhythm of such lines as “the husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,” were as sweet to me as a spoonful of sorghum molasses.
James Whitcomb Riley was a poet of the old school. His poems rhymed, a style now sadly out of vogue in today’s free-verse literary circles. Modern critics often dislike his use of dialect. They call his writing sentimental, proclaim its subject matter superficial, even refer to him a regionalist—as if that were a bad thing. Yet from the 1880s until well into the Twentieth Century, Riley was the nation’s most widely read poet. His books sold millions of copies and are still in print. When he went on tour across the country, tickets for his readings sold out almost overnight; audiences were huge. Newspapers called him “the poet laureate of America.” His writing became the basis for courses at many Ivy League colleges, and he received any number of honorary degrees—including ones from Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Indiana University, and Wabash College. The National Institute of Arts and Letters made him a member and conferred upon him a special award for his poetry. To this day, the level of popularity he received has not been surpassed by any other poet during their lifetime.
You can tell James Whitcomb Riley knew and loved October. While the poem’s setting may reflect a bygone era, anyone attuned to nature, the outdoors, the rhythm of the seasons, and is familiar with rural life and country ways, will find the unerring ring of authenticity still remains. I find an absolute seasonal verisimilitude in the way the lines so perfectly capture the month’s marvelous mood.
Yessir, the old Hoosier poet, who looked like anyone's avuncular uncle, could make words dance and sing and sometimes practically jump off the page, into your heart and head. That’s why my father read him, why several of his books graced our hallway bookcase, why I still turn to this particular poem to usher in October.
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When the Frost is On the Punkin'
WHEN the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock,
And the clackin' of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens,
And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;
O, it's then the time a feller is a-feelin' at his best,
With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,
As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.
They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here—
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees,
And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees;
But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock—
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.
The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,
And the raspin' of the tangled leaves as golden as the morn;
The stubble in the furries—kindo' lonesome-like, but still
A-preachin' sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill;
The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed;
The hosses in theyr stalls below—the clover overhead!—
O, it sets my hart a-clickin' like the tickin' of a clock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.
Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps
Is poured around the cellar-floor in red and yaller heaps;
And your cider-makin's over, and your wimmern-folks is through
With theyr mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and sausage too!...
I don't know how to tell it—but ef such a thing could be
As the angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around on me—
I'd want to 'commodate 'em—all the whole-indurin' flock—
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.
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(Note: I just found this wonderful recitation of the poem by the late Kent Risley. Moreover, his introductory story is lovely.)
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