Post below on any aspect of Robert Frost's work, though you might want to think about the following questions:1) How do Frost's speakers view the American landscape? Furthermore, what makes his poems "American"?
2)What kind of relationships between humanity and nature are explored in Frost's poems?
3) What attitudes toward the passage of time are expressed?
4) How does Frost capture the rhythms of ordinary speech through traditional verse forms?
5) How does Frost marry form and content?
6) The theme of loss recurs in a number of Frost's poems. Compare the ways in which loss is portrayed in these poems.
You might also be interested in checking out some of these Frost resources on the web:
Poets.org page about Robert Frost
The Friends of Robert Frost House and Museum in Vermont
This video (link to YouTube) of Frost reading "After Apple-Picking." There are many, many videos of Frost up on YouTube, which--at least to me--are fascinating tributes to one of our most famous national poets.
The audio is great but the animation is way creepy. It will haunt my sleep.
ReplyDeleteHello everyone, I would like to comment on Frost's use of snow and ice imagery in the selected poems (no pun on his name intended).
ReplyDeleteMost of the selected poems invoke this wintry imagery when examining the landscape and its meaning to man. Ice imagery can carry a number of connotations: it is often considered a symbol of isolation, dreariness, and loss--as in the loss of greenery and the death of nature only to be reborn in due time, but it's also the loss of warmth and our natural sense of comfortability. But ice is also a thing of beauty; it drapes the landscape with the purity of white and infinite sparkling crystals, morphing the traditional world into a winter wonderland. It gives us a whole new perspective on the world we see for the other three-fourths of the year.
Frost plays with this duality of ice imagery in his poetry. Consider "Birches," which comments upon the destructive nature of ice, how it (literally) bends nature to its will. We all saw this in the ice storm this year! Ice can certainly be a disastrous force of nature. In this poem, we equate ice with the loss of nature and life, even if it's a temporary one. On the other hand, look at "Stoppiing by Woods on a Snowy Evening," which casts ice in its opposite role. Here, the speaker is so awed by its beauty that he must stop to behold it. In this poem, ice is a thing to be admired, a beautiful aspect of nature, not a violent one.
This duality of connotation can be applied to other elements: fire and water are necessary for life, but both kill millions of people every year. A calm breeze is welcome today, but those winds can turn into fierce hurricanes or tornadoes tomorrow. It's the duality of nature as both friend and foe that make it such a great tool in poetry, as Robert Frost shows us.
The two poems that I took most interest in were "After Apple-Picking" and "Birches." I thought both poems did a sort of commentary on time. "Apple-Picking" in particular seemed to show a progression of time for the narrator. Perhaps it was over his entire life time. He grows weary of apple-picking by the end and wants more and more to sleep. Its like all the apples represent memories and obstacles the narrator has faced at some point in his life. It is through the apple-picking and the seasons that Frost represents the movement of time.
ReplyDeleteIn "Birches," Frost shows the movement in time in two different ways. First, with the trees themselves. He describes them in winter when the snow and ice have made them heavy and droopy. Then with the return of sun and heat in the spring, the ice melts, but the trees are no longer what they once were. They are forever bent and haggard. The second use of time in the same poem, is with the boy, whom he likes to imagine bent the trees while climbing. The narrator imagines himself as a boy and how he loved climbing too (past). He then grows into the man he is presently, who dreams of climing the limbs into the heavens (future). I think here Frost is using nature in a direct comparison to the evolution of our own lives.
A line from "Mending Wall" jumped out at me: "Good fences make good neighbors." That line, repeated twice in the poem, bothered me. Why do fences make good neighbors?
ReplyDeleteBeing raised in a small town, I am close to all my neighbors. The idea that you would want to stay separate from your neighbors or to block them out is a foreign concept for me.
"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out,"
Are the good neighbors the one you block out or the ones that aren't nosy? I think Frost prefers the ones that you can block out. But the problem with walls is that for every person that wants a wall, there is someone else that wants to tear it down. "Something there is that doesn't love a wall, / That wants it down."
In Robert Frost's poetry a reoccurring theme of nature and humanity comes up, with it seems an emphasis on woods. Many times he speaks of woods as a lonely place where time slips by often times too fast. The Wood-pile is a good example of this. The poem speaks of a woodsman who cut a tree and left the pile. "He spent himself, the labor of his ax, And leave it there far from a useful fireplace To warm the frozen swamp as best it could With the slow smokeless burning of decay." This last line particularly struck me because it left a dreadful feeling inside me like there was no hope for this woodpile as it was left there with an inevitable feeling that Frost was referring to more than just the woodpile but humanity as well.
ReplyDeleteHe plays with time in the poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening too, but in a dreary sense. He is toiling with the thought of suicide here and the passing of time in the snowy woods. The last stanza is particularly interesting with the description of the woods as, "...lovely, dark, and deep,..." leaving a lonley quiet feeling to the whole poem. Frost wants us to realize we have more time to spend our lives with, "And miles to go before I sleep."
The relationship between humanity and nature that I found in Frost's poems is one of destruction. This theme begins in "Mending Wall" in which Frost describes how the hunters have torn down the wall, "Where they have no left one stone on a stone." The passage gives you an image of the wall coming down. This is another aspect of humanities relationship with nature, this idea of things coming down. Frost repeats this idea in "After Apple-Picking," when he talks about the ladder against the tree and the ladder falling. Again Frost repeats this in "The Wood-Pile," when he describes a wood pile as, "somewhat sunken." Here again we get the image of things being brought down. In "Birches" Forst describes seeing trees that are bent and says, " I like to think some boy's been swinging them."
ReplyDeleteIn all of these poems we get to see this relationship between man and nature. A relationship in which the themes of destruction of things being brought down, the wall, the ladder, the wood-pile. In all of these examples we see that the things that are being brought down are the things in which man has an interaction with nature, the wall was built through nature, the ladder leaning against the tree, the pile of cut wood sunken in nature. So we see the theme that Frost is creating, that humanities relationship with nature is a fallen one.
Here's where I have to make a confession. I do not understand poetry. I like reading it and the sense of rhythm within it, but I don't know what it's trying to tell me. Oddly enough, I don't mind studying it in class, because I'm hoping that one of these days I might get it.
ReplyDeleteI did gather a theme of isolation throughout the Frost poems assigned. Many of the poems' narrators stand alone in a cold empty forest which seems very isolating. The imagery of the falling snow in many of the works left me feeling cold mirroring the idea loneliness.
I don't know about you guys, but I had the impression beforehand that Robert Frost was just kind of a greeting card-esque sort of poet, and I didn't really have any care to read him.
ReplyDeleteHowever, upon really reading "The Road Less Travelled," I realized that this is hardly the case. Frost pinpoints this specific emotion--one whose name I really couldn't tell you--perfectly. He doesn't show any bias towards either side, and he doesn't even make a decision. The concept that you've lost something before you've even started is extremely depressing, and I'd never really thought about his poem like that.
The poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" was probably my favorite from the selection. The repetition of the line "and miles to go before I sleep" at the end of the poem is just amazing. He uses the rhyme scheme here to make this point extremely clear: he can't stop yet, and he has to keep going before he gets to rest. The rhyme keeps the poem moving at an incredibly fast pace, and contrasts well with the interrupted rhyme scheme from the first three stanzas (aaba as opposed to aaaa)
I didn't like Robert Frost that much before, but now that I've actually thought about it, he's an amazing poet.
The poems that stood out the most to me from the collection were "Mending Wall" and "The Road Not Taken". I think that it is interesting that in these poems there is a sense of isolation felt by the author, and this isolation is resounded in the imagery of his natural surroundings. Each of the poems we have read have a natural sense to them, most of them seeming to take place out of doors, but these two seemed the most interconnected to me while I was reading.
ReplyDeleteIn "Mending Wall" I believe Frost is discussing the isolation felt throughout humanity. People often like to keep others out, and this can be seen through the imagery of building a wall. Frost doesn't seem to know his neighbor at all in the poem, "We keep the wall between us as we go," which seems to be a commentary on how most people live their lives, not really getting to know most of the people they are surrounded by. Instead, they seem content, just like Frost's neighbor, to believe that "Good fences make good neighbors," and it is best to stay out of each others' business.
In "The Road Not Taken" Frost discusses his own isolation away from the rest of the world as he goes along the less-travelled road. Frost considers which of the road is better, for although his is "grassy, and wanted wear" they had "worn them really about the same". He does not seem to think that his is any better than the other, although his choice of taking the less travelled one makes the difference more obvious to himself. In this, he may be commenting on not directing his life in the way that many may be directing theirs, and his satisfaction with the choice.
I was thinking about the relation between the form and content of these poems, and at first it seemed to me there wasn't much to say because about half of the assigned poems were written in large blocks of unrhymed ten-syllable lines (blank verse, maybe?). Even in the poems divided into stanzas, the form doesn't seem too interesting at first glance. It took a second look to see that "Mending Wall" looks like a wall upon the page.
ReplyDeleteFrost is a solemn guy, even haunting, and I think this is due in part to the solid structure of his poems. They are symmetrical and ordinary-looking, which all contribute to the quiet, lonely thoughtfulness of these poems. Frost also uses end-rhyme perfectly; I am thinking of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." The end-rhyme beckons you into the snow.
-Megan Blankenship
Oh, something else I wanted to talk about: the introduction in our book made Frost sound kind of anti-modernist. However, as someone above said, isolation runs deep in these poems, and what theme is more modern than that?
ReplyDelete-M. Blankenship
Question for all: Does natural destruction make these poems "American?" This seemed to be a running theme
ReplyDeleteThe Mending Wall is what I'm wanting to concentrate on. What's going on is a tension between these two "neighbors" who maybe aren't so neighborly. At the end the two people are working so hard at mending this wall, keeping the holes filled. They make sure the emotional distance- stays distant.
Yet by doing this they are breaking down the wall they are trying so hard to build. In the building, or the "mending" of this wall itself, the two men are sharing a connection. A bond.
When I read the line that said "he will not go behind his father's saying" I thought about how this kind of treatment may have been going on throughout the generations (which to me this seems distinctly Southern.)
What I mean by this is if we've seen our parents, our preachers, build walls. Then we may be building them too. Just because they did. Maybe there are still people that treat others (their "neighbors") how we've seen these other people (or "neighbors") being treated.
To take this poem to a universal level here are some examples: maybe some people are still racist because that's what their parents showed them.
Thus, blacks are the lesser. And we build our walls.
Even against our own neighbors.
Or maybe we treat LGBT people like an "abomination" because we've only been taught our parent's or preacher's way of reading scripture. Thus, these people are fags. And we build our walls.
Even against our own neighbors.
If we've been taught to build walls, we will build them. But in building these walls, maybe we each knock them down. Maybe we don't know why or what we're "walling in or walling out," as Frost asks.
Maybe we mend them because we're too scared to let them fall. But inevitably the walls will crash. Our comfort zones will be breached. A connection can be reached. Maybe, "good fences (will no longer) make good neighbors."
Though many still "move(s) in the darkness as it seem to me."
Hopelivingstill is Elizabeth Smith by the way
ReplyDeleteStopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening:
ReplyDeleteFrost always has a lovely way of bringing his poetry alive. I feel as if I'm in the scene that he is writing when I read his work. This work also is very dark. It leaves me with a mysterious feeling on why he stopped by the woods and what he could be seeing.
I like what sschafer said about the poem “Mending Wall,” the poem in its literal sense appeals to me because as a more private person the idea of fences promotes boundaries. I also thought it was interesting that sschafer being from a small town finds the separation from neighbors as a “foreign concept” and I being raised in a city-esque atmosphere welcome the idea. Neighbors are nice especially if you need to borrow some sugar, but I agree with the speaker’s neighbor in this poem in that proper boundaries come in handy.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the isolation and loneliness gleaned from his poems, it seems that to an extent Frost maintained these feelings in his own life. The brief biography given in the text shows Frost as private and the loneliness can be defined as regret and sadness from late success and deaths in the family.
I also found it interesting that the later Frost wrote his poems the more he played with rhyme schemes. The last two we read, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (1923) and “Desert Places” (1936) had definite rhyme schemes while the other five didn’t have any that I could determine.
This is not my first time reading Robert Frost and to be quite honest I was not looking forward to reading him again. However, I have to say I did enjoy “Mending Wall.” In our anthology, Frost’s introduction describes his work as being, according to Ezra Pound, “very American.” And yet, in “Mending Wall,” he does not hold up his neighbor (a sort of New England everyman) as being admirable. On the contrary, he questions and pokes fun at the fence mending tradition. So while Frost identifies himself with the New England orchard owner, he is still able to step back and see some things from an outsider’s perspective. He compares what many people probably consider a necessary and very sensible spring-time chore, mending the fences, to a game played among children. This is very probably what this chore would look like to someone who didn’t understand the purpose of what was being done. Frost also brings strongly into question the prudence of this chore, why do they bother mending the wall if they don’t have livestock? Any outsider can see that there is nothing for the wall to keep in or out, yet the neighbor seems oblivious. “Good fences make good neighbors.” What kind of answer is that? Frost seems annoyed by this response. He is out there working his hands raw for the sake of an out-dated and irrelevant anecdotal statement? Why? But I also get the feeling that he will be out there doing the exact same thing again next year, if for no other reason than to humor his otherwise inoffensive neighbor. I really appreciate the comedy and honesty in this poem.
ReplyDeleteEllie W.
W/r/t the passage of time issue (As this is a blog, I find it difficult to use anything other than relatively casual and abrupt sentences - my mildest apologies to anyone bothered.): I think Birches gives the reader the fullest idea of where Frost is in his life and world perspective. The ruminations on the young boy bending down the birches and the half-hearted wish to be removed from world seem to imply Frost's resignation to the unanswerability of those age-old existential/metaphysical questions. (Sidenote: right after having this thought, I looked it up, and sure enough - Frost was only 40 when he wrote this poem. I assumed older.) However, the sheer existence of "Birches" seems to comment directly on Frost's dependence on nature to supply comfort and assurance of something greater, if the answers are truly to be found only in death.
ReplyDelete-SCRAM