The Kitchen Chimney
The Kitchen Chimney - context Summary
Published in 1936
Published in 1936 in A Further Range, this short poem uses a homeowner’s voice to insist on sensible, practical construction: a kitchen chimney should be built from the ground up, not perched on a shelf. Frost frames the request in plain, domestic terms—safety, cleanliness, and habitability—while letting a personal memory of boyhood fantasies (castles in the air) undercut the absurdity of a decorative chimney. The poem reflects Frost’s New England rural concerns and his habitual interest in how ordinary, material choices shape everyday life and well-being.
Read Complete AnalysesBuilder, in building the little house, In every way you may please yourself; But please please me in the kitchen chimney: Don’t build me a chimney upon a shelf. However far you must go for bricks, Whatever they cost a-piece or a pound, But me enough for a full-length chimney, And build the chimney clear from the ground. It’s not that I’m greatly afraid of fire, But I never heard of a house that throve (And I know of one that didn’t thrive) Where the chimney started above the stove. And I dread the ominous stain of tar That there always is on the papered walls, And the smell of fire drowned in rain That there always is when the chimney’s false. A shelf’s for a clock or vase or picture, But I don’t see why it should have to bear A chimney that only would serve to remind me Of castles I used to build in air.
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