Life Events That Influenced Robert Frosts Poetry - Essay Example

?Life Events That Influenced Robert Frost’s Poetry Introduction Kesselring p.2) s that Robert Lee Frost is one of the greatest and most popular American poets of the 21st century. He is among the best writers America has ever produced when it comes to playwriting and poetry. Most Americans admire him because of his realistic portrayal of rural life and for being a great American orator. Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California, where his father worked as a journalist and politician (Kesselring 2013, p.2). Despite his popularity as a poet in America, he remained unknown for four decades. Frost began writing poems immediately upon returning from New England at the start of World War I, where he established himself as poetic force to reckon. Most of his poems revolve around his rural life setting in New England where he grew up during most of his childhood (Cox 1962, p.4). Frost used his personal work to evaluate complicated philosophical and social themes. He died on January 29, 1963 from complications he suffered after prostate surgery, but after being honoured with four prestigious Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. Frost is one poet whose writings are said to have been influenced by the challenges he faced growing up. As earlier stated, Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California., to Isabelle Moodie Frost and William Prescott Frost. Frost lived with his family in San Francisco for 12 years until the death of his father, William Prescott Frost who passed on from tuberculosis. After the death of his father, Frost migrated with his mother, Sister Jeanie and his grandparents to Lawrence town, Massachusetts, where he enrolled at Lawrence High School. It is here that Frost met Elanor White, whom he fell in love with and later married (Cox 1962, p.4). After completion of high school, Frost attended Dartmouth University for a couple of months, while working as a slew of unfulfilling job at the same time. He reportedly wrote his first poem, "My Butterfly: an Elegy," in 1894, which was published in The Independent Journal based in New York (Cox 1962, p.5). After the successful publication and reception of the poem, Frost proposed for his lover Elanor, who was studying at St. Lawrence University. However, Elanor turned down his proposal arguing that she needed to complete her studies first. Therefore, Frost had to wait until Elanor finished he school when she accepted to her proposal and married her con December 19, 1895. They were blessed with their first child, Elliot just a year after marriage, according to Cook (1974, p.9). Cook (1974, p.9) claims that Frost then enrolled at Harvard University in 1897, but dropped out a two years later due to illness. Therefore, he was compelled to return to his wife who was now pregnant with their second child, Lesley, who suffered from mental disorder. At the turn of 21st century, Frost migrated with his family in New Hampshire where they lived for 12 years. Even though his life here was fruitful as far as his writing was concerned, it marked the most difficult period of his life. Elanor reportedly gave birth to four more children in New Hampshire, Carol, Irma, who later developed mental disorder; Marjorie; and Elanor. Two of Frost’s children died during this period. Cook(1974, p.9) noted that, Elliot was the first to passed on aged four years old due to cholera followed by Elanor who died of complications developed at birth. To make matters worse, despite Frost and his wife’s several attempts to do poultry farming, their efforts proved unsuccessful. However, the challenges notwithstanding, it was during this period that Frost familiarized himself with the rural life. It is this life challenged that he lived to depict very well in his many poems in the countryside. Some of the famous poems that revolve around his life history and challenges are "The Tuft of Flowers" and "The Trial by Existence," which he wrote in 1906 but had no publisher willing to underwrite (Sharma 2012, p.1). Since he could not find publishers willing to underwrite his new poems in New Hampshire, he decided to dispose of the farm he owned in New Hampshire and migrated to England where he could find more publishers willing to publish and promote his poems. It took Frost just a few months in England to find a publisher who published his first literary works such as A Boy’s Will, and North of Boston. His stay in England also gave him the opportunity to meet Ezra Pound and Edward Thomas, two men who ultimately influenced his life and writing a great deal (Sharma 2012, p.12. Pound and Thomas are said to have been the first people to review Frost’s works favourably and encouraged him to continue with the great work of writing poems. Unlike in New Hampshire where Frost encountered many tribulations, his life in England was very enjoyable, though was short lived. It was short-lived because World War I broke out few years later in 1914, forcing Frost and Elanor to return to the United States in the early 1915. Despite the tribulations, Frost received a rousing welcome upon returning home as his reputation as a poet had preceded him. One of his famous poems he wrote upon return is the Mountain Interval, which is a collection of all the works he created while in England (Kesselring 2013, p.13). Frost later settled down on his farm in Franconia, New Hampshire in 1916 where he began a long as a lecturer at colleges, and writing and reciting poems to eager crowed. Among the colleges and universities he taught include Dartmouth, Middlebury college and the University of Michigan and Ripton campus, Vermont. He received more than 40 honoraries and four Pulitzer Prizes for his great and exceptional literary works such as the Hampshire, Collected Poems (1931), Further Range (1937), and A Witness Tree (1943). Frost died on January 29, 1961 aged 89 years (Kesselring 2013, p.15). Robert Frost’s Influences Frost is regarded as one of the greatest poets in America’s history. Based on his autobiography, it becomes apparent that Frost was influenced to poetry by his life events in both the United States and England. Most is his poems are full of themes revolving around the difficult life full of grief and loss (Hill 1972, p.12). In this regard, it can be concluded that his poetic works was influenced by the psychological introspection, political quandaries such as the World War I. One thing that certainly influenced Frost’s poetry was the loss he suffered because of the death of four out of his six children and the fact that his wife also died in his lifetime. Apart from the loss of his wife and four of his children, Frost also suffered psychologically because his only sister went insane and had to be institutionalized. To make matters worse, Frost lost his father when he was barely 12 years old, according to (Hill 1972, p.13). Further, the death of his dog might also have influenced hugely his poetry since the theme of loss and grief is present in most of Frost’s poems. A close analysis of most of Frost’s poems shows that his works are largely autobiographical. For example, some of this famous poems such as "Mending Wall" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," both revolves around specific life events full of grief that Frost lived both in England and Hampshire, notes Hall (2012). In most of his poems, Frost drew inspiration from his own life, and then incorporated metaphysical themes to portray his message. Additionally, it is apparent from most poems written by Frost used several emotional themes in his poetry, which included life-long depression, sadness at death of his family members and loneliness. For example, in his poem, “New Hampshire,” Frost puts much on emphasis human activities and values. As the poem continues, Frost appears to find satisfaction in human activities. According to Frost, life and man remain almost the same. To emphasize his point, Kesselring (2013, p.8) argues that Frost expresses personal tears, moment of doubt and mood of depression. The depression expressed in the poetry is the result of tragedies, which took place during his life. According to Frost’s poems, man appears to be left in an uncertain situation and just as important, according to Hall (2012). He suffered many difficulties during his life, which makes existence difficult for him, particularly in the mood of happiness. In fact, Frost entirely expresses the mood of grief in the entire poem, “New Hampshire.” As stated in Frost’s autobiography, his life in Hampshire was the most agonistic. This is because it is here that he lost his four children, his daughter went insane and failed to succeed in his poultry business. As a result, the mood of grief he went through in Hampshire is widely expressed as a theme in his book, “New Hampshire.” Therefore, in New Hampshire, Frost sees fearsome universe, according to Kesselring (2013, p.31). He sees a serious man and difficult condition in his fearsome universe. In fact, due to the difficult time he faced in New Hampshire, Frost writes the poem as though the existence of God is irrelevant. This is because he believes that if God truly existed, then he should not have undergone the agony. As a result, he is in completely in an agnosticism mood. In the poem “New Hampshire,” front appears to think that God is very hash and not considerate. He claims that God has no sympathy for human beings due to God’s failure to intervene to his agony in Hampshire when he was losing his children and family members. From Robert Frost’s work, Kesselring (2013, p.32) claims that God appears to have temporarily withdrawn. The fact that Frost grew up in Swedenborg also influenced largely his poetry. Despite Frost being atheist, his sentiments, and poems reveals that he must also have been influenced by religion. He argued at one time that, despite not living in Swedenborg any more, it had a huge impact on his life as a poet. Frost asserts, “What is my philosophy? That is hard to say. I was brought up a Swedenborgian. I am not a Swedenborgian now. But there is a good deal of it that's left with me. I am a mystic. I believe in symbols. I believe in change and in changing symbols. Yet that does not take me away from the kindly contact of human beings. No, it brings me closer to them" (Hall 2012 par.1). Swedenborgian influences on Robert Frost’s poetry as evident in most of his poems are shown through his mother Isabelle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, a famous 19th Century American philosopher and author, notes Hall (2012). From the poems, we realized that Frost’s mother Isabelle became a Swedenborgian in their early days in San Francisco. As a result, Frost regularly attended the Swedenborgian Church Sunday School as a youth. This influenced hugely on his behaviours, which he expressed through his literary work as a poet. At the same time, we realized that Frost read several works of Emerson, whom we realize was an admirer of Swedenborg and lectured a lot on Swedenborg. In fact, he wrote a chapter on him called “Swedenborg or the Mystic” in his book Representative Men. In fact, Frost acknowledges that Emerson influenced largely his thinking as a poet. Accordingly, Hall (2012) argues that Swedenborg influenced Frost’s understanding and use of symbols in his poems. This is evident in Robert Frost’s 1959 essay, “On Emerson,” where Frost expressed his religious heredity. Frost states, "My mother was a Presbyterian. We were here on my father's side for three hundred years but my mother was fresh a Presbyterian from Scotland. The smart thing when she was young was to be reading Emerson and Poe...Reading Emerson turned her into a Unitarian. That was about the time I came into the world; so I suppose I started a sort of Presbyterian-Unitarian. I was transitional. Reading on into Emerson that is into “Representative Men” until she got to Swedenborg the mystic, made her a Swedenborgian. I was brought up in all three of these religions, I suppose. I do not know whether I was baptized in them all. But as you can see, it was pretty much under the auspices of Emerson. It was all very Emersonian. Phrases of his began to come to me early" (Hill 1972, p.16). From his autobiography, we realize that Frost grew up in the farm. This greatly influenced his work as a poet since most of his works as considered pastoral. Pastoral in this regard refers to pastoral that revolves around rural life and nature. For instance, in most of his poems, Frost’s main concern is with man. Stilling (2006) argues that Frost’s poems focus much on position and attitude of man, especially the feelings. In this regard, Frost reveals a good deal of his conception of the universe and external reality. This is attributable to the rural life, which he grew up in following the agonies he faced in New Hampshire. According to Frost’s personal evaluation, man is sharply limited. He reveals in most of his poems how man is limited in his intellectual power, understanding, and awareness. Accordingly, Frost claims that man has a different way of seeing the universe. What is apparent is that he makes such comments in comparison to the life he lived in the rural surrounding. In most of his poems, Frost shows that man does not understand nature and his relationship with him. He goes ahead to claim that make lacks the capacity to make a balance of nature and his relationship, observed Stilling (2006). Accordingly, he considers man very handicapped and with certain limitation. For example, in some of his religious poems such as ‘The Trial by Existence,” Frost represents man’s limitations similarly. “Nothing but what we somehow choose; Thus are we wholly stripped of pride In the pain that has but one close Bearing it crushed and mystified” (Hill 1972, p.19). By making such statements, Frost tries to show that the universe is neither incomprehensible nor uncontrollable. In other words, Frost tries to say that man has no control over nature, especially the universe. Just as he was unable to understand why he was faced by many challenges such as death of his family members, here he is trying to explain that man is unable to understand the universe’s realities. This means that the position of man is very difficult in the universe. To Frost, the universe is merely a vacuum without meaning. For instance, in his poems “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and “Design” Frost shows how man is isolated, alienated, and put aside from men of the universe (Hill 1972, p.23). In addition, Frost argues that men who are alienated from the rest in the universes are harmed easily by others. According to Frost’s poem titled “An Old Man’s Winter Night” man’s vulnerability in an empty universe is brought out (Hill 1972, p.23). These statements in the poem are made in an apparent reference to the fact that he lived a miserable life the rural setting after having been alienated in the city. The fact that Frost was isolated and suffered as a consequence also influenced his poetry. In his autobiography, Frost only had a mother, father, sister and his children. However, his father died very early when he was barely 12 years old. As a result, he had to work hard to make ends meet. This prompted him to marry Elanor whom he is blessed with six children. However, instead of celebrating the gift of children, four of them die, his sister become insane and institutionalized. This lives him with his wife and two children to keep him company. However, an agony strike again when his wife also died, leaving his an isolated man (Edelman 2002).. Frost clearly brings out the theme of human insecurity in his poem “An Old Man’s Winter Night.” In this poem, Frost continually explores man’s isolation in apparent reference to the kind of live he had to endure due to disasters that struck him in his life. The same theme is expressed in the poem, “Storm Fear” in which the speaker feels very much isolated, lonely, and insecure in the universe (Edelman 2002). According to this poem, the speaker faces the natural forces directly. This is a direct replica of the kind of life Frost lived after the death of his family members. Since life was hard for Frost and his family, he endeavoured to try working on farm and even kept poultry to make ends meet. However, the business of keeping chicken was not successful making Frost and his family lives a very miserable life. The events of World War I also greatly influenced Robert Frost’s poetry, according to Edelman (2002). In his autobiography, we are told that, despite enjoyable life Frost had in England, it was short-lived due to World War I, which broke out in 1914. As a result, he had to live with his family back to Hampshire where he had been rejected and no recognition among the masses to escape the war. However, since he was deeply perturbed by the war, he decided to compose a poem titled "The Road Not Taken" for one of his closest friend who was involved in the war in France. Edelman (2002) believed that the poem is a true reflection of his friend’s anguish about the decisions that people have to make in life. In this poem, Frost suggests that he had been thinking about Edward Thomas, a close friend of his, and the vital choices he was facing, which could imply life or death. It is reported that during an address at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 1953, Frost lamented that he wrote one of the stanzas in the poem “The Road Not Taken” while he was sitting in his sofa at his home in England. According to Frost, he was not thinking about himself when writing the poem, rather a friend of his who had gone off to war. This statement by Frost was made in reference to the first stanza of the poem that reads, Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveller, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth (Edelman 2002, par.8). Another poem titled “War Thoughts at Home,” inscribed by Frost in 1918 also tells a story of Edward Thomas whom he talked about in the first poem. However, in this poem, Frost reveals how he died during the World War I that he escaped by migrating from England to the United States. Like in earlier poem, Frost narrates ambience regarding war and its consequences. Unlike in the early poem, the poem “War Thoughts at Home,” also narrates of Frost’s other friend Fredrick G. Melcher. Stilling (2006) argues that Melcher greatly influenced Frost’s poetic thoughts regarding the war. Therefore, it becomes apparent that Frost’s poetic thoughts were greatly influenced by the events of World War one and its effects. From Frost’s autobiography, we learned that he suffered from depression, which even made him contemplate suicide at one time. Hall (2012) noted that Frost suffered from manic disorder because of the stress he underwent after having lost his family members. As a result, he developed depression out of stress, something that pushed him to contemplate committing suicide. These life events certainly formed the basis of writing his poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” This is so because his poem is a metaphor of Frost’s life. In the last stanza, Frost states, The woods are lovely dark and deep But I have promises to keep And miles to go before I sleep (Sharma 2012, p.3). Woods, according to the stanza refers to death, which Frost desires to melt into. At the same time, he fails to find a dream in his sleep and promises to fulfil them since he still have a long way to go before he can find peace. This stanza clearly shows the extent to which Frost was frustrated with life due to depression, which prompted him to consider committing suicides as the last resort of gaining peace. Robert Frost was also influenced into poetry by the kind of life he lived in New England, where he lived most of his life, according to (Sharma 2012, p.3). Despite growing up in the city, we are told that Frost loved nature and rural life. This influenced largely his simple and perfect use of natural patters of peach in his poems. For instance, we can see that most of Frost’s subjects were simple, the same way his life was in New England. Even though his poems used simple language and speech, they were universal representation of real life situations. Stilling (2006) notes that he intelligently used rhymes, similes, and metaphors in most of his poems to pass the message in a style that many people could understand. This made him classified among the greatest American poets of all times. In fact, most of Frost’s poems show repeatedly shows the extent to which Frost’s poetry was largely influenced by nature, notes (Sharma 2012, p.4). This is shown through the sheer influence of forests in his farm and the through the amount of time he spent with them. These aspects are clearly brought out in his famous poems such as “The Road Less Travelled By” and “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” For instance, Frost lost his son Elliot from cholera in 1900. We understand that this tragic event took place at a time when he was barely four years old. Therefore, to show his devastation over the happening, Frost writes, “Home Burial,” which shows his desire to bring take his son back home (Hill 1972, p.26). He goes ahead to express his disguise by revealing how no American publisher was interested in his poems. Since no American publisher was willing to publish his poems, he opted to move to England to try his luck there with other publishing companies. As a result, Frost, wrote most of his greatest poems in England because of the inspiration he had living there. Robert Frost poetry was also largely influenced by the events of the Great Depression that saw him lose his daughter and wife through natural death and his son who committed suicide. This is evident in most poems he wrote after the Great Depression where his topics and images changed from the earlier works that focused on nature and man to the relationship between man and man. In the poems, he wrote after the Great Depression, Frost mainly expresses the feelings and concerns of Americans, who find it hard to keep up with the economic situation. For instance, in 1938 during the Great Depression, a tragedy occurred that overshadowed his publication when the news broke out that Frost’s wife Elanor passed on when being operated on for cancer treatment (Hill 1972, p.29). Since this tragedy event in Frost’s life, he never looked back on his literary work, expressing such themes throughout his poems. It is surprising that he blames himself for Elanor’s death. He believed that his tribulations were as a result of God’s punishment and being put on trial like Jobe to show the devil that through the treatments administered, man could still be appreciative. Frost reflected this in his poem Forgive O Lord, when he says “Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee/And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me” (Hill 1972, p.31). The great big joke that Frost refers to here implies the treatment he receives from God. Again, during the Great Depression, in 1940, barely two years after his wife’s death, his son Carol commits suicide, leaving Frost disillusioned and hopeless. This prompted his to move to Cambridge, MA, his last home where he passed on after seeing all his children and family members or suffer from mental disorders. Conclusion Robert Frost is one of the greatest poets in America’s history whose legacy will remain forever. He is one poet who embraced the philosophy that everything has a beginning and an end and that people live only once, therefore, should live it to the fullest without wasting any little opportunity. His poetry was full of symbolism and depicted much about his personality and emotions. However, what is apparent is that his poetry was influenced largely by his upbringing, his adult life, as well as his complicated era. References Cox, J.M 1962, Robert Frost: A collection of critical essays. Prentice-Hall, Hoboken, NJ. Cook, R. L 1974, Robert Frost: A living voice. University of Massachusetts Press, New York, NY. Edelman, B 2002, “Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’: The World War I connection.” Viewed 15 August 2013, http://www.veteransadvantage.com/cms/content/frosts-road-not-taken-world-war-i-connection. Hall, D. J 2012, "The mystic lens of Robert Frost: Bent rays from Swedenborg" in Studia Swedenborgiana, vol. 9, no. 1. Hill, O.G 1972, Transcendental influences on the poetry of Robert Frost: And eighteenth-century reception of Pope's Iliad. University of Texas at El Paso, New York, NY. Kesselring, S.T 2013, Robert Frost. ABDO, London, UK. Sharma, N 2012, The realistic nature of Robert Frost’s poetry. The Criterion: An International Journal in English. Vol. III. Issue. I, pp. 1-4. Stilling, R 2006, “Between friends: Rediscovering the war thoughts of Robert Frost,” University of Virginia. Viewed 15 August 2013, http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2006/fall/stilling-between-friends/. Read More