...Frost won the Pulitzer Prize for New Hampshire (1923), which was one of his longest poems based on the values of life and the character from New England (Perkins & Perkins, 2009). A Boy’s Will and North of Boston were two volumes that went unrecognized in America until Frost moved to England where both volumes were accepted and published but when the volumes were later published in the United States this encouraged Frost to return to New Hampshire (Perkins & Perkins, 2009). Frost produced later volumes that are also particularly American and contain discussions of religious insights and contemporary society, New Englanders idealized (Perkins & Perkins, 2009). Robert Frost is known as a New England poet, and he is also known as an American poet. What makes his poetry so special is the universal appeal of his work (Van Doren, 1951). In “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” Frost brings his reader straight to the woods of New England. “Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though;” and “Between the woods and frozen lake the darkest evening of the year” (Frost, 1920/2009. p. 1457). In “The Road Not Taken,” Frost again uses his surroundings of the New England area as a major focal point. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…To where it bent in the undergrowth…Because it was grassy and wanted wear; / Though as for that, the passing there / Had worn them really about the same” (Frost, 1915/2009. p. 1451). According to Van Doren, 1951, Frost’s...
Words: 704 - Pages: 3
...Examining Robert Frost’s Poem: Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening William R. Spicer, Jr. ENGL 102 Composition and Literature April 23, 2012 Examining Robert Frost’s Poem: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening has been my favorite poem since the fourth grade. Mrs. Brown, my English teacher, discussed the poem during the week before Christmas break. The entire school was buzzing with excitement at the upcoming holiday and when she introduced the poem, it seemed like everyone and everything slowed and we were transformed to a quite snow-covered forest. The question I chose to answer is about the symbolism in the setting of this poem. In our text a symbol is defined as a person place or thing in a narrative that suggests meaning beyond its literal sense. The simplistic setting represents the author’s need for peace, rejuvenation and a reminder of home, before he starts out again on his journey. Few places can be considered as comforting and peaceful and lovely as a familiar forest covered in snow. Since the writer was not afraid of being alone I believe he must be very familiar with the forest and probably grew up near it. The wood behind my house was a very special place for me. In the summertime it was a place to build forts and have adventures with my friends. On cool summer nights, it’s where my friends and I would pitch a tent and tell scary stories by flashlight. My family and I would go on hikes and discover a new place...
Words: 757 - Pages: 4
...Destiny Martin English/6th 5-22-13 Core Robert frost life in a nutshell Robert Frost, called by Robert Graves "the voice of America" is also the farmer Poet of America. He has appealed to readers worldwide with his impulsive utterances, clarity of diction, lyricism and the significance he imparted to man. Frost's poems exhibit a realistic approach-a conglomeration of the metaphysical and the symbolic. As Mark Van Doren asserts" Frost knows to say a great deal in a short space. Poems like "Mending Wall", "The Road Not Taken" , "Birches" .etc exemplify that a poem must begin in delight and end in wisdom. The very opening line of "Mending Wall" poses as a typical instance of Frost's inverted statements: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." The poem which begins on a conversational mode proceeds to have deeper implications. At the superficial level, it appears to be a war of words between two neighbours. However it has other ramifications in that it alludes to any border, division or barrier in any walk of life. Frost also is a regional poet like Hardy, his Wessex being New England. The above said poem being regional, gives off universal evocations. Frost's social orientation is suggested by the fact that the poem was read out in 1961 as an indictment on the construction of the Berlin Wall .The tone is colloquial and has a easy manner at the surface. Nevertheless, there is an underlying satire and wry humour. Frost's poems are noted for their terse...
Words: 716 - Pages: 3
...Robert Frost, a great literary writer found a way to use nature as a tool to express human experiences. Throughout the course of his life he has inspired writers and created a new view on how we as humans view nature and the world around us. Robert Frost has been known to be a complicated poet because he did not focus so much on weather a line rhymed. Frost wrote deliberately to paint a picture or create a story for his readers. He wrote with care to express what he was truly feeling. Most of his poems are written with undertones that would require the reader to look deeper into what was written. When most poems are examined more in depth Frost becomes much more complex, showing that there is a deeper and sometimes darker undertone to the engaging words of the poems. Frost had experienced pain and tragedy, with many deaths of family members, during his life. He finds that his suffering makes the thought of death both fascinating and tempting. Frost considers death but has decided to pursue life and the choices that one faces along life’s paths. Frost uses his greatest inspiration, nature, to tell stories of happiness, tragedy and pain. Nature is the one thing that remains constant. It continues to flow and carry on through good and bad. I feel that Frost noticed this and found a way to connect and mimic nature’s process: the circle of life. In nature this includes life and death. After the cycle of death, nature creates anew and continues to blossom and bloom. ...
Words: 3009 - Pages: 13
...Period 2 27 February 2013 Robert Frost In the last sentence of one of Robert Frost’s most recognized poems, “The Road Not Taken”, he states, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference”. Considering he was widely viewed as an untraditional poet, this line explains his writing style precisely. He took a different path and strayed from the conventional style that many poets were so accustomed to. His work is unique and transverses between the work of nineteenth century poetry and a more modern type of poetry (“Robert Frost”). He writes of nature and its relationship with man, which is a result of the life he lived in the rural lands of New England. The landscape of New England and the dialect of its inhabitants became an inspiration to most of Frost’s popular work. Frost’s poetry really took off after the death of his father. In 1884, he and what was left of his family moved to Massachusetts, which became the birth place of his poetry (“Robert Frost”). In 1982, he graduated with the title of class poet, and two years later his first poem “My Butterfly” was published (“Robert Frost”). The poem ended with the death of a butterfly which can be assumed to be a reference to the death of Frost’s father. After the success of this poem, though, Frost’s work was constantly being rejected by American magazines which made him come to the decision to move his family to England (“Robert Frost”). His father wouldn’t be joining...
Words: 984 - Pages: 4
...Robert Frost (1874-1963) was the leading modern American poet of nature and rural life. He found beauty and meaning in commonplace objects, such as a drooping birch tree and an old stone wall, and drew universal significance from the experiences of a farmer or a country boy. Most of his poems have a New England setting and deal with the theme of man's relationship to nature. The influence of nature in Robert Frost's works creates a palette to paint a picture filled with symbolism for the reader to interpret. In the analysis of Frost's The Road Not Taken, Tree At My Window, Two Trumps In The Mud Time and Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening we can pick out specific examples to illustrate Frost's overall use of nature. In the first stanza of Robert Frost's Stopping by the Woods on A Snowy Evening we find the speaker reflecting on the beauty of a wooded area with snow falling. Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. You can feel the speakers awe and reflective peace when looking into the woods that night. He doesn't know the owner of the land but is still drawn to the beauty of the scene. Nature poet Robert Frost gives a scene that is taken into the reader and digested for a time in the speaker's mind. It shows us that it is all right to take a minute out of a hurried hour and reflect upon what is around you, whether it is a snowy wood or a quite room....
Words: 2773 - Pages: 12
...Robert Lee Frost was one of America's leading 20th-century poets and a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Often regarded as a poet associated with rural New England, he wrote poems whose philosophical ideas transcended any region of the country. North, East, West and South, no matter where the person came from, Robert Frost could communicate through poetry. Although his verse forms are traditional, he was a pioneer in the poetic use of the vocabulary and variations of everyday speech. He was able to conjure emotions that most people would not talk about in public (death, the loss of a loved one, man’s own mortality) and inject his poems with symbolism and metaphors. In 1885, when Robert Frost was 11, his father died and the family left California and moved to Massachusetts. Frost attended high school in that state, entered Dartmouth College, but remained less than one semester. Returning to Massachusetts, he taught school, worked in a mill and as a newspaper reporter. In 1894 he sold “My Butterfly: An Elegy" to The Independent, a New York literary journal. A year later he married Elinor White, with whom he had known from Lawrence High School in Mass. From 1897 to 1899, he attended Harvard College as a special student but left without a degree. Over the next ten years he wrote (but rarely published) poems, operated a farm in Derry, New York, and supplemented his income by teaching at Derry's Pinkerton Academy. In 1912, at the age of 38, he sold the farm and used the...
Words: 1580 - Pages: 7
...Have you ever taken the time to stop and just watch the snow fall from a cold winters night? In the poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, he did just that. Not only is this poem about that, but there is also something deeper, as this poem can be read on many different levels. Has this traveler made promises that he no longer wants to keep? While deep into the snowy woods, the man has to make the decision to keep on going or stop and live the way he has always dreamed of. This poem may seem short and simple, but the implications beneath the story are much greater. In the first stanza, Robert Frost goes on to explain that the man is stopping in the woods to watch the snow fall, but he knows that the land he is stopping on is owned by another man. He goes on to assume that the owner lives in the village and will not see him standing out there. Could this be some sort of death wish? In the second stanza, the horse that the man had rode on, seems to think that it is strange that they are stopped in the middle of no where without any houses near. The third stanza also reiterates this by telling us that the horse is shaking his bells, a way to ask the man if there is a mistake or if everything is okay. The fourth stanza is the most important one of this poem. The first line of the fourth stanza Frost writes “The woods are lovely, dark and deep” (line: 13) is the first implication that this poem is darker then what is described in the first three stanzas...
Words: 765 - Pages: 4
...“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...
Words: 1347 - Pages: 6
...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)....
Words: 793 - Pages: 4
...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...
Words: 817 - Pages: 4
...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...
Words: 801 - Pages: 4
...The Darkness in 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...
Words: 929 - Pages: 4
...Sheri Belgard Professor Cavell English 1002, Section 08 04 November 2015 The Importance of Choices in the Poems of Robert Frost Robert Frost’s poems depict humans as travelers on the journey of life and are often centered on the setting of nature. While his poems may seem straightforward because of the simplistic natural setting, they often contain a much deeper and profound message, which resonates with the reader. Throughout our journey we must make choices, from the mundane, to the utterly life altering. There are three poems, "The Road Not Taken," "The Wood-Pile," and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," that convey his idea that our choices shape our futures and the people we become. "The Road Not Taken", explores the acts and consequences of choices. The speaker finds himself between “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood/ And sorry I could not travel both” (Frost 1-2). The yellowness of the wood establishes an autumnal setting which is in sync with the speaker’s contemplative tone as he is deciding which road to take. The speaker looked down as far as he could, “To where it bent in the undergrowth” (Frost 4-5), but could not see beyond it. The “undergrowth” is a metaphor for the mysteries in life which remain unknown. The “two roads diverged” symbolizes the tough choices people come across while traveling the road of life. The regret of the speaker’s decision is expressed with a “sigh” as he reflects on the unsatisfactorily state of his current life, and realizes...
Words: 645 - Pages: 3
...The 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...
Words: 884 - Pages: 4
