Cracker-barrel

Robert Frost was a nice old New England guy with a lot of cracker-barrel wisdom that the government, somehow or other, saw fit to honor because he read a poem, or something, at the Kennedy inaugural.

One can love these moments, can cherish their invocation of the American sublime (though Wright's notion of the sublime seems closer to the lurid paintings of Bierstadt than to Whitman), and yet dislike the cracker-barrel philosophizing in which they're embedded.

The elaboration of this Donne-like metaphysical simile leads her to a cautionary conclusion, which has been praised for nearly a century for its profundity cast in the cracker-barrel tone of the “Down East” porch philosopher: "And he whose soul is flat — the sky/Will cave in on him by and by."

“If there is such a thing as a cracker-barrel philosopher left in our century, Mr. Golden has earned the title,” declared the New York Times.