...Elements of “A Girl’s Garden” In “A Girl’s Garden” by Robert Frost, the theme expressed is the unique pleasure of a rural childhood, as well as the girl’s youthful exuberance about the garden she grew. The speaker is a neighbor of the girl, who is now an adult woman living in town. The speaker tells the story, attempting to convey the importance of the garden to the adult woman because of the joy she still takes in reminiscing about her experiences, regardless of the perceived success of her efforts. This is achieved by excellent use of tone, rhythm, and imagery. The tone of the poem is consistently light and pleasant. From the beginning the girl remembers the experience fondly, as shown in lines -4 “likes to tell how one spring when she was a girl on the farm, she did a childlike thing.” The poem goes on to describe how the young girl asked her father for a garden of her own. The father’s response of “Why not?” and decision to give her a small, walled-off piece of useless land, as well as his comments in lines 1-16 suggests that he was humoring her because he knew it would be quite an undertaking. In lines 7 � 40 “her crop was a miscellany when all was said and done, a little bit of everything, a great deal of none”, the text at first seems to change tones. Yet the speaker ends the poem by reiterating the woman’s pleasure of telling the story of when she was a “farmer”. When taken into context with the rest of the poem, the tone has not changed. Regardless of the outcome,...
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...the life of Robert Frost 03 Aug 2012 Robert frost is one of the most well-known and enticing poets of the 20th century. His poems were full of metaphors, similes, symbolism, and onomatopoeias. He was a very descriptive and egocentric writer whose work is usually known for being rooted in realism with some dark undertones. What makes Robert frost’s works seem so dark? In this paper I will analyze his poetry, which may provides the answer to what made Robert frost one of the greatest, yet darkest poets in the 20th century. Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, nine years after the end of the civil war. After the death of his father in 1885, the family moved to New England, where Robert would grow up spend the rest of his life. He was not a good student, but he took easily to writing. In high school, he graduated as Co-valedictorian with his future wife, Elinor Miriam White. After high school, Frost attended Dartmouth college and held many different odd jobs before he becoming a teacher. Most of Robert frost’s poetry was based in his native New England. He was a realist, which meant that most or all of his poems dealt within the real world. He was more of a traditional writer, although most of his poems are free verse. His poems focused on how or what man was thinking. Much of his poetry included features of the New England landscape. This type of writing was carefully tied together to create not only the surface of the poem, but to also...
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...Realities Poetry has been around for many centuries and the world has witnessed many fine artistic poem writers. Throughout this paper, the life of Robert Frost will be explained along with some of his outstanding poetry. We will discuss who he was, how Frost started in writing his poetry, and how some of his poems relate to what is happening in today's world. Robert Frost was named after the Southern General, Robert E. Lee. He was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, California. Because his parents were a teacher and a journalist, he was always around books. He studied literature from William Shakespeare and poems from Robert Burns and William Wordsworth. Robert excelled in many topics in school such as history, botany, Latin, and Greek. Frost also played football and graduated top of his high school class. Robert Frost started writing poems at an early age. His first poem, “La Noche Triste” was published in his high school newspaper. Frost later enrolled in an Ivy League college in Hanover, New Hampshire. Robert Frost was not fond of the campus life so he quit college and started teaching while he was writing poetry. Frost got his first break as a poet in 1894 when the New York Magazine, “Independent” published his poem, “My Butterfly” for only 15 dollars. Robert Frost later in 1895 married his lifelong sweetheart Elinor Miriam White and had six children together. Robert Frost later entered Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and even though he left because of...
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...Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” In 1923, prolific poet Robert Frost wrote the poem entitled, “Fire and Ice”, which was his way of deciphering which way the world would end and cease to exist. He pondered through two solutions: fire and ice, which are two extremes on a spectrum. Through many of Robert Frost’s works, he discusses the existence of life and man’s response to life and nature that surrounds it, which is no surprise that he would focus his attention to the demise of the world. Frost’s unique use of imagery in “Fire and Ice,” brings this short poem to life as he gives us, as readers, a look into his thoughts of the fate of the world. As you read the title of the poem, “Fire and Ice,” there are many conclusions one can come up with that they would think the poem is about. Frost’s use of imagery causes us, as readers, to be drawn in immediately. The first line of the poem tells us what Frost recalls others to say how the world will end, and then he continues to give his personal account. He begins by saying, “From what I’ve tasted of desire/I hold with those who favor fire” (4-5). These two lines seem to describe the intense passions and desires, which can consume us and cause us to be destroyed if they are unhealthy. Because of our extreme passions with desires, Frost agrees with those who believe they world will end in fire. Frost continues by discussing the viewpoints of those who believe the world will end ice. He states: ...
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...In Robert Frost's symbolic poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" he uses the literary devices rhyme, personification, metaphor, and imagery to convey meaning; he explains how nothing, especially something beautiful can last forever. Ways he shows this is "The first green of spring is her hardest hue to hold" and "so Eden sank with grief". All these express that nothing good can last. Frost uses nature as his theme because the cycle of life and death showed through the season provides imagery that people can picture in their head. Robert Frost wrote "nothing gold can stay" after his mother dies and his brother was diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. This explains how his theme nothing good lasts forever relates to him in a personal way. When...
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..."Nature's first green is gold" ......................Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost Frost's poem contains the perfect image of Vermont's spring landscape. The hardwoods lose their leaves in autumn and stay bare through the winter. In spring, the first green to appear is really gold as the buds break open. The willows and maples have this temporary gold hue. In only a few days, the leaves mature to green. Figurative Language Figurative language uses "figures of speech" - a way of saying something other than the literal meaning of the words. For example, "All the world's a stage" Frost often referred to them simply as "figures." Frost said, "Every poem I write is figurative in two senses. It will have figures in it, of course; but it's also a figure in itself - a figure for something, and it's made so that you can get more than one figure out of it." Cook Voices p235 Metaphor A figure of speech in which a comparison is made between two things essentially unalike. To Frost, metaphor is really what poetry is all about. He is notably a poet of metaphors more than anything else. This is so important, we should hear directly from the poet. Frost said," Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, 'grace metaphors,' and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, 'Why don't you say what you mean?' We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like...
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...The great poet, Robert Frost, was born March 26,1874 in San Francisco, California (Robert Frost Biography). At a young age Frost was presented with the traumatic news of his father’s, William Prescott, death due to the cause of tuberculosis (Robert Frost Biography). This incident was just the first of many that might have caused his use of individualism and symbolism throughout his poems. After his father’s tragic death he moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts with his mother and sister (Robert Frost Biography). Frost attended Lawrence High School where he graduated as valedictorian. He also met his future wife, Elinor White, as this educational establishment. Elinor was his co-valedictorian when they graduated in 1892 (Robert Frost Biography)....
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...Among the five authors that I have chosen they all relate themselves to the material that they write. The authors that I have chosen are, the poets, Robert Frost and Robinson Jeffers, the prose writers, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Willa Cather, and the dramatist, Eugene O’Neil. In all of their writings they have an autobiographical nature that tells the reader about the authors own life. Without the aspects of these authors’ lives their writing could differ. This aspect of revealing ones own life through writing can be seen in Robert Frost’s poems not because he portrays his own life, but quite the opposite. It is commonly known that Robert Frost life was filled with much depression. Because of this, Robert Frost tends to dwell on the surreal beauty of nature in life. It is seen in his poems such as “The Pasture” that Robert Frost puts what has fulfilled his life in his writing. Like these other authors, Robinson Jeffers also involves his life in his poetry. Throughout his life Jeffers religious intent shows him to be a pantheist whose God is the evolving universe. In his poem “Credo” he talks about how nothing is real except but what we make it. The idea that God is in our minds, and he creates the images that makes things real. The religious background of his life affected him to write the poems of the permanence of God. Similar to Jeffers deep appreciate of God, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman has a profound value for the culture of rural New England. In her story...
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...“Miles to go before I sleep” Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, is a few lines describing a man’s horse ride through the woods, but it speaks to everyone who reads it about major questions concerning their lives. In Stanley Burnshaw’s Biography, “Robert Frost”, he said, “In the great short lyrics of New Hampshire (1923) and West-Running Brook (1928)—such as “Fire and Ice,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and the title poem of the latter book—a bleak outlook on life persuasively emerges from the combination of dramatic tension and nature imagery freighted with ambiguity”. Frost was a powerful poet who used metaphors and imagery in his writings; for that reason most of his written work is discussed at the academic level and his work can often be...
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...Robert Frost is known as one of America’s great poets, with this known he still has a dark side and somewhat terrifying side to his poems as well. Erin Brescia states “One of the reasons Robert’s Frost poetry is enjoyed is his ability to capture the reality of everyday living in a language that is accessible to the average reader” and that his poems are just everyday people doing everyday things, such as jobs, chores and work. I have read many of Frosts poems and agree this is true, but with this fact some of his poems pertaining to jobs have a very dark outcome. Erin cites the poem “Putting in the seed” explaining how the narrator loves planting apple seeds and knows someone will soon get him for dinner and try to stop him, but will probably in the end will also take pleasure in planting seeds. Also cited is “The Pasture” where Erin States “the narrator has a list of chores that must be accomplished” like raking leaves and checking on a calf. These poems deal with regular people and everyday life, which is one of the themes in Frost work. Frost has other poems that deal with just everyday life such as “The Road Not Taken”, this poem is about a man who comes to a fork in the path and decides to take the path that is less traveled, but as he does, thinks about the other path and what gifts it may hold, and how in the future he may be able to come back and take that other path. Again another poem about everyday life, while this poem does not fit with many themes of jobs...
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...The Attraction of Woods on a Snowy Evening In Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, we follow what appears to be the traveler’s short journey through a beautiful snowy landscape. Words such as peaceful and serene come to mind. During the first few lines of this poem it seems as if this traveler has found an idyllic setting. However, upon closer examination, we have to ask the question of why this traveler has picked “the darkest evening of the year…to stop without a farmhouse near.” Does this traveler have other things on his mind beyond admiring the scenery? Let’s step into the setting of this poem and see what intentions this weary traveler had. Beginning with the title, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” the reader already knows that the traveler is stopping to admire the falling snow in this wintery land. Sounds pleasing enough, yet the very first line alerts the reader to the fact that the traveler is somewhat cognizant as to who’s woods he is journeying through. He goes onto mention that the owner of the woods won’t know he is there since the owner lives in the village. This seems to give some indication that maybe there is more going on in this traveler’s mind. Almost a hint that he is either trespassing on this land or maybe he just doesn’t want anyone to know what he is up to. The fourth line of this poem, “To watch his woods fill up with snow”, seems to be a turning point where the reader is taken from this idyllic setting to almost...
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...American Poetry Interpretation Robert Frost, one of the most famous poets in American history, gave a whole new window to the world to view it through poetry. His poetry collection explores many different aspects of his writing. Though he was one of the finest poets in American history, his works were the subject of misinterpretation due to the figurative language used in his works. The publication of most of Frost’s successful poems occurred after he moved to New England in 1912. As a result, Frost used the scenery of New England’s surroundings, nature, and the speech of the countryside in many of his poems. Frost’s poems seem to explain the nature of living of people and seem to be self-explanatory on the surface, but his observations have an edge of skeptics and irony, which the reader discovers upon reading several of his poems. His poems are never as old-fashioned, easy or carefree as they might appear on the surface. Though Frost used the uncomplicated language of the New England countryside, the complicated and darker themes of his poems do not appear on the surface. Nature comes into play in the first live of the poem “The Road Not Taken” when Frost introduces two separate paths in the woods, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / And sorry I could not travel both” (Frost, 1999/1916, line 1-2). He has to make a choice during his journey in the woods regarding, which path he should choose to be same and happy at the end but is not able to decide the right path...
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...Robert Frost and Shaun Tan use different mediums and techniques in order to represent similar ideas about journeys. Journeys can lead to self-growth. Choice, change, discoveries and new experiences can all result in having undertaken a journey. Shaun Tan and Robert Frost have each explored these ideas in their texts The Arrival and The Road Not Taken. In Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken, Frost conveys his perspective on the journey through the use of a variety of language techniques. Journeys involve choices, which can slightly or significantly alter the paths we take in life as the poem consists of two roads which metaphorically represent choices. “ Two roads diverged ... and that has made all the difference” demonstrates how the author has learned to take responsibility for the choices he has made in life and is content that choices make who we are. Robert Frost uses several techniques such as metaphors, repetition and symbolism. Repetition displays the character’s frustration towards making choices and symbolism shows the unseeable end to this path being taken. The main technique used is metaphor as the whole poem represents the journey of life and the choices that are a part of it. The journeys in life we take can lead to choices that change our life forever. Throughout a journey an individual must make a variety of choices. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost clearly shows the composer’s thoughts on making choices throughout a journey. In the first stanza of the...
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...Graham Jarvis Research Paper English 1020 Tri-C Mr. Adam Brodsky 12/17/2007 Robert Frost’s influences that made him the honored American poet of the 20th century Robert Frost’s influences that made him the honored American poet of the 20th century Robert Frost was the most widely admired and highly honored American poet of the 20th century. His occurrences throughout his life inspired his poetry, most of which were inspired by his own life story. For that reason many of Frost’s poems have the same or similar topics to what Frost was dealing with in his life. Robert Frost’s main influences for his poetry came from his experiences in life. He used his relationships, nature, and the religion that surrounded him to create the poems that have made him the recognized poet that he is today. Robert Frost had many important relationships throughout his life that affected many of his choices as well as his poetry. In several of his relationships he suffered devastating losses including the death of his father, his mother, his sister, two of his children, and his wife. The loss of each of these important relationships influenced his career and affected poetry in a different way. Robert Frost’s relationship with his father, William Frost Jr., impacted Frost’s life which in result affected his poetry. Frost’s father was a journalist and a teacher that moved his family out to San Francisco...
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...Robert Coleman Mr. Pearce Honors 9 English 2 February 2012 An analysis of Robert Frost's Poetry Robert Frost was a master at creating serious poems. Robert Frost created these somber poems through the use of two elements: imagery and tone. Frost uses imagery and tone by implementing dark words to create sad and foreboding scenes in the readers mind. An analysis of Robert Frost's poems reveals that he creates a somber mood through his use of imagery and tone. Robert Frost uses imagery to create a somber mood in his poems. When Frost creates a poem, he typically uses words that have dark meanings to describe the scenes of his poem. A good example would come from his poem “Ghost House”: I dwell with a strangely aching heart In that vanished abode there far apart On that disused and forgotten road That has no dust-bath now for the toad. Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart. ("Poem Hunter") Here, Frost uses words like “disused”, “forgotten”, and “aching heart” to create imagery of a sad and depressing scene. The word disused and forgotten is applied to the road, making it appear ragged, old, and in disrepair. The speaker describes himself as having an aching heart where he is dwelling, telling the reader that he is strangely sad, but not exactly knowing why. Whereas the first example shows how Robert Frost uses imagery of sight to create a desired effect, he also uses auditory imagery. In the poem “Acquainted with the Night”, it is best shown...
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