What Is Robert Lee Frost Famous for - Research Paper Example

?Robert Frost Introduction Robert Lee Frost (1874 – 1963), one of the most celebrated American poets, is mainly known for his realistic depictions ofrural life through his poetry and is regarded as one of the finest of rural New England’s pastoral poets. He is a poet who considered nature and his rural surroundings as a source for insights to write his poems and, to him, poetry begins with nature. Apart from the themes of rural life, Frost’s poems also celebrated various intricate social and philosophical themes. Significantly, Frost occupies the status of one of the most read and constantly anthologized poets in American literature. The most remarkable characteristics of Frost’s poetry include the clarity of his diction, his colloquial rhythms, the simplicity of his images, and the unsophisticated and direct method of writing. As Katrin Gischler (2007) maintains, “Although his career started only at the age of forty, he made his mark as a poet, becoming more and more widely known until at the end he was the United States’ de facto poet laureate. He was a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and received an unprecedented number and range of literary, academic, and public honors.” (Gischler, 3) Therefore, it is fundamental to realize that Robert Frost had a highly successful poetic career, which hit its peak when he recited his poem “The Gift Outright” at the inauguration of John F Kennedy in 1961. This paper makes a reflective exploration of the most essential thematic elements in the poetry by Robert Frost, focusing on some of his most celebrated poems. Robert Frost was born to journalist William Prescott Frost, Jr. and Isabelle Moodie, in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. At the age of eleven, Frost’s father died of tuberculosis and he moved to New England, along with his mother who now resumed the career of a teacher in order to support the family. From his early school years at Lawrence High School in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Robert Frost developed interest in reading and writing poetry. Following his studies at Lawrence High School, Frost was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, although he did not earn a formal degree. It is evident, from a biographical study of the poet, that Robert Frost had a tumultuous and unstable early life, but a stable and happy adult life with his wife Elinor Miriam White and his children. “The first thirty-eight years of his life were determined by his own insecurity and vulnerability. Only the influences of his mother… did much to shape Frost’s basic nature. Later on, Frost also felt the influence of his high school comrade, Carl Burrell… The last and longest influential relationship was that with Elinor White, whom Frost married in 1895.” (Gischler, 3) Elinor White remained the chief source inspiration for many of the poems by Robert Frost. A close analysis of the biography of Robert Frost confirms that his personal life, especially the early stages of his life, was overwhelmed with sorrow and hammering, including the death of his father due to tuberculosis, of his mother due to cancer, and the experience of mental illness and depression by his younger sister Jeanie, his daughter Irma, and his wife Elinor. Therefore, it is fundamental to realize that Robert Frost withstood several misfortunes and miseries all through his life to produce some of the most fascinating lines of poetry ever written in literature. Thematic Elements in Frost’s Poetry In American literature, Robert Frost holds a unique and almost isolated position, thanks mainly to the rhetoric devices and thematic elements of his poetry. Significantly, the basic emotional or psychological experiences expressed by this great poet of nature make an impact on the readers even today. It is essential to realize that, even while following the essential principles of versification, Robert Frost’s poetry is rich with psychological meaning and humanist ideologies. The poetic intelligence of Frost can be very well understood in the way he used traditional poetic devices such as rhyme and meter as a means to present his thematic elements effectively. His excellent poetic skills are comprehensible from the manner in which he dealt with his rural and natural themes and issues. In a reflective exploration of the major thematic elements of Robert Frost’s poetry, it becomes lucid that the poet dealt with various themes such as nature, communication, everyday life, isolation of human beings, importance of duty, rationality versus imagination, rural life versus urban life, etc. However, as a poet often identified as a New Englander and interpreted as a nineteenth century Transcendentalist, Robert Frost primarily focused on the theme of nature in his poetry. As Michael R. Little (2009) maintains, “nature is one of the most obvious themes associated with Frost. Many of his poems focus on farmers working on the land, a solitary self-reflexive wanderer, or wildlife in its element… In all of Frost’s nature poems, a relationship between people and nature is implied if not explored outright.” (Little, 53) Although the thematic elements in Frost’s poetry include various themes such as the limitations and isolation of the individual in the social and natural environment, the underlying concern of the poet has been nature, and he transforms this theme to present the relationship between man and nature. Significantly, nature is not only the setting of his poetry but object of study as well, and he brings out the essential characteristics of the relationship between nature and man. Any analysis of the major thematic elements of Robert Frost poetry should focus vitally on his treatment of nature in various poems. One of the most fundamental aspects of the thematic concerns of Robert Frost is that he believed in transforming the ordinary themes of fictions and poetry, by supplying his original poetic skills to them. He has never been driven to create myths or fictions of origin, but he created new meanings to the myths or fictions that were already created. Similarly, Frost had nothing to do with the sacred installation of the past – both historical and autobiographical, but he did deal with these elements in his various poems. As Charles Berger purports, “in his poems of brooks, pools, and gardens, in his speculations on the wellsprings of sound and song, Frost shows an uncanny ability to approach the formerly sacred source, to breach the beginning of things, without yielding to their hierarchic lure. Frost plays upon the prestige of these themes, but ends by including or accommodating them within, not outside, the range of lyric discursiveness.” (Berger, 67-8) Therefore, Robert Frost dealt with various themes of previous origin in such a way that these thematic elements achieve unparalleled beauty and significance among the readers, and his poems of brooks, pools, and gardens exemplify this vital feature of the themes in his poetry. As aforementioned, Frost places a profusion of importance on the theme of nature in most of his poems, and ultimately brings out the man-nature relationship. In the celebrated poems by Robert Frost, a reader easily identifies the poet’s concern for nature and transience. Many of his pastoral themes such as sheep and shepherds are connected with the theme of man-nature relationship and these poems are set in the specific locations in New England. Instead of limiting himself to such stereotypical themes, Frost focuses on the spectacular struggles that take place within the natural world. Thus, the readers realize that the poet deals with the conflict of the changing of seasons in his celebrated poem “After Apple-Picking” and reflects on the destructive side of nature in “Once by the Pacific”. Essentially, Frost presents nature in its varied roles and aspects. He considers nature as the basic inspiration for metaphysical thought and philosophical reflections on humanity. “Frost has so often written about the rural landscape and wildlife that one can hardly avoid thinking of him as a nature poet. “To the Thawing Wind,” “Hyla Brook,” “The Oven Bird,” “Birches,” “A Drumlin Woodchuck” -- one could cite such titles by the score... Frost’s nature poetry is so excellent and so characteristic that it must be given a prominent place in any account of his art.” (Lynen, 208) The most fundamental characteristic of the thematic element of nature in Frost’s poetry is the essential man-nature relationship it brings out. In Frost’s poetry in general, a careful reader notices the poet’s impulse to identify with nature and, more significantly, to withdraw towards an appropriate human self-definition. “In all of Frost’s nature poems, a relationship between people and nature is implied if not explored outright.” (Little, 53) Based on the relationship between the poet and the natural world, Frost presents the essential man-nature as one of his grand themes. In the words of John Zubizarreta (2001), “When we read Frost’s poetry broadly as a record of the impact of the natural world upon the poet, we can see how powerfully indeed Frost lived in the physical world and how sensitive he was to its influences… Indeed, as Frost himself says in “To the Thawing Wind”, it was necessary at times to escape from his ‘narrow stall’, with ‘poems on the floor’, and be blown ‘out of door’, driven by natural forces themselves to leave the hermitlike obsession with verse and the mind and come into the natural world of spring, where, clearly, the poet, finding ‘the brown beneath the white’, will be renewed by the landscape’.” (Zubizarreta, 222) It is no doubt that Robert Frost is considered as one of the most important nature poets and naturalist in American poetry. Nature-Man Relationship as a Major Thematic Element in Frost’s Poetry: An Analysis of Three Poems by Frost One of the major poems by Robert Frost which deals with the thematic element of nature is “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening”, which presents an individual’s momentary encounter with nature. At the very opening lines of the poem, the poet introduces nature as the topic of his reflection: “Whose woods these are I think I know.” (Line 1, 22) The narrator of the poem, who is traveling by a horse-drawn wagon on a rural road, is caught by the beauty of the nature when he watches the “woods fill up with snow.” (Line 4) By presenting the beauty of the nature as appreciated by a traveler on his demanding journey, the poet brings out the ultimate connection between nature and human beings. In fact, the traveler in the poem represents human being on their journey through life and the poet suggests the meaning of nature in man’s journey of life. Every man who sees the appealing scene of woods filling with snow is appreciative of nature’s meaning in human life. Like the narrator of the poem, all human beings appreciate the beauty of nature by saying “woods are lovely, dark, and deep.” (Line 13) Here, the poet also presents the detailed responses of the natural world and he is representing the natural world as such. “When in “Stopping by the Woods” the poet tells us that “the only other sound’s the sweep of easy wind and downy flake,” we trust that he has been in the woods during snowstorms and that his deepest perceptions about the meaning of experience are shape by and negotiated in the actual.” (Zubizarreta, 222) Thus, in a reflective analysis of the poem “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening”, it becomes lucid that the poet makes his philosophical reflections and metaphysical thought in the background of nature and his ultimate objective is to bring out the relationship between man and nature. This fundamental relationship is brought about in the last lines of the poem, where he connects the beauty of the nature and the responsibilities of individuals as social being: “But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep.” ((Lines 14-6) As Edith L Tiempo (1993) maintains, “Since he is both an individual and a societal being, his scruples keep him aware of his obligations to both these sides of his nature.” (Tiempo, 220) “Birches” is a typical poem which demonstrates how the poetry of Robert Frost often embraces themes of nature and how it brings out the man-nature relationship. As a poet who has felt a deep connection to the natural world, Frost uses nature as the background for presenting his metaphysical thought and ideologies. Thus, “Birches” makes effective use of nature imagery in order to convey contempt for the pressure of social life. “In his detailed responses to the natural world, he is a realist, however much, in his philosophical poems, he questions common sense and our grasp on a common reality. Careful observation informs poems such as “Birches” that seems to be about something besides nature but that begin with a scrupulous detailing of what the world in certain circumstances looks like.” (Zubizarreta, 222) Significantly, “Birches” evokes its most fundamental image against the background of a darkly wooded landscape: “When I see birches bend to left and right / Across the lines of straighter darker trees, / I like to think some boy’s been swinging them. / But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay / As ice storms do.” (Lines 1-5) As Frank Lentricchia (1975) suggests, Frost makes an important probe into the power of his redemptive imagination in “Birches”. “At the end of “Birches” a precious balance has been restored between the claims of a redeeming imagination in its extreme, transcendent form, and the claims of common sense reality.” (Lentricchia) Whereas the poet deals with the power of the nature to change the thinking of man, he does not consider either of the two as superior to the other. Values are weighed differently in this poem and the details in the first twenty lines of the poem are precise and deceptively neutral. “The entire passage contains nothing to suggest that nature is superior (or inferior) to man, not are we inferior that the two are equal… He approaches, finally, the idea that man’s acts upon nature have their own meaning and beauty… “Birches” suggests that nature’s beauty is somehow enhanced when man has worked an effect upon nature.” (Monteiro, 104) In essence, “Birches” is an important poem which suggests the poet’s thematic concerns of man-nature relationship. The question of man-nature relationship in Robert Frost’s poetry is very much evident in the short lyric “The Sound of Trees”, in which the poet suggests the power of nature to influence man’s likes and dislikes. Significantly, Frost introduces vital issues in this poem which will surface in various other tree poems. In this poem, Frost “deals with another form of social burdening that, while not as devastating as the sort suggested in ‘Birches,’ is no less tiresome. Here, I believe, Frost discusses the social burden of socializing itself.” (Chastain) In the opening lines of the poem, Frost speaks of bearing and suffering the noise of the trees, “ultimately listening to them, being tempted, prodded, to ‘make the reckless choice’ to be gone.” (Zubizarreta, 242) Significantly, the poet presents the sounds of trees as annoying and exasperating in the opening lines: “I wonder about the trees / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?” (Lines 1-5) However, ultimately, the poet emphasizes the power of nature over man that makes him “make the reckless choice” of bearing with it. Conclusion Nature is, indubitably, one of the major thematic elements in Robert Frost’s poetry and this poet of nature makes an essential connection between nature and human beings. Along with the mutual relationship between man and nature, the poet also makes clear the fundamental contrast between the two. In all the poems discussed in this paper, this essential contrast between man and nature becomes evident as the major concern of the poet. “This contrast between man and nature is the central theme of Frost’s nature poetry. Whereas Wordsworth sees in nature a mystical kinship with the human mind, Frost views nature as essentially alien. Instead of exploring the margin where emotions and appearances blend, he looks at nature across an impassable gulf. What he sees on the other side is an image of a hard, impersonal reality. Man’s physical needs, the dangers facing him, the realities of birth and death, and the limits of his ability to know and to act are shown in stark outline by the indifference and inaccessibility of the physical world in which he must live.” (Lynen, 208) Significantly, the thematic elements of Frost’s poetry show us that the relationship between man and nature is intrinsic and his poems offer a crucial lesson to the modern man on how to exist with the nature even while the realities of nature and the physical world may vary. In short, Robert Frost’s poems bear witness to the fact that Frost is a poet who is much significant and important in today’s world. Works Cited Berger,Charles. “Echoing Eden” Frost and Origins.” Robert Frost. Harold Bloom and Jesse Zuba (Ed). Infobase Publishing. 2003. P 67-8. Chastain, Scott. “Nature Imagery of Robert Frost as Metaphor for Social Burdens.” Angelfire. 27 July 2011. . Frost, Robert. “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening,” Robert Frost’s New England. Betsy Melvin and Tom Melvin. (Ed). UPNE. 2000. P 22. Gischler, Katrin. The Theme of Boundaries in the Poetry of Robert Frost. GRIN Verlag. 2007. P 3. Lentricchia, Frank. “On “Birches”.” Robert Frost: Modern Poetics and the Landscapes of Self. Duke UP. 1975. Monteiro, George. Robert Frost & the New England renaissance. University Press of Kentucky. 1988. P 104. Little, Michael R. Bloom’s How to Write about Robert Frost. Harold Bloom. Infobase Publishing. 2009. P 53. Lynen, John F. “Nature and Pastoralism.” The Pastoral Art of Robert Frost. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 1960. P 208. Tiempo, Edith L. Introduction to Poetry: Poetry through Image and Statement. Rex Bookstore, Inc. 1993. P 220. Zubizarreta, John. The Robert Frost Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. 2001. P 222. Read More