Robert Frost -- ife Issues and Parallels to My ife
A ife Filled with Tragic Inspiration

Robert Frost was a prolific American writer and poet whose work captured the difficulties some of the most challenging periods in modern American history as well as his personal trials and tribulations. Frost's work is known for the eloquence that he was able to express using the simple language of common colloquial speech (Holman & Snyder, 2012). His father, a hard-drinking disciplinarian and journalist, died at the age of thirty-six from the consequences of excessive drinking when Frost was a child. His adult life was also marred by a long string of personal tragedies, such as in the loss of two of his six children in infancy and of his favorite child, his daughter, Marjorie, after delivering her first child. Only four years later, his wife, Elinor, suffered a sudden fatal heart attack, followed two years…...

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Library of America.

Thompson, L.R. (1966). Robert Frost: The Early Years, 1874-1915. New York: Henry

Holt & Co.

Robert Frost wrote, "I have written to keep the over curious out of the secret places in my mind both in my verse and in my letters." In a poem, he wrote, "I have been one acquainted with the night." Those unfamiliar with Robert Frost's life story might not realize the significance of those words. Frost was born in a nearly lawless city and grew up in a highly dysfunctional family. As an adult his life was riddled with trials and tragedies. Although he and his wife had four children, three died tragically: a four-year-old boy, a daughter from tuberculosis, and another daughter to suicide.
Robert Lee Frost had secrets to keep. orn in San Francisco in 1874, his family had so many secrets that for many years he was not certain of the year of his birth (Meyers, p. 2). The first Frost came to the United States in 1636…...

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Bedford/St. Martin's. DATE. "Robert Frost." Authors in Depth. Accessed via the Internet 3/19/04.  http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/literature/bedlit/authors_depth/frost.htm 

Lovett-Graff, Bennett. "Robert Frost." 2004: Gale Encyclopedia of Popular Culture.

Meyers, Jeffrey. Robert Frost: a biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

Robert Frost's adulthood was also riddled with loss. He often felt jealous and resentful that the quality of his poetry was slow to be recognized. Unable to support his family with his writing, for many years he had to work at various jobs, often as a teacher until his grandfather finally gave him land to live on and an allowance with on which to live (Meyers, p. 52). In addition, although he and his wife had four children, three died: a son at the age of four; a daughter before she was 30 from tuberculosis, and another son by suicide. These losses put stresses on his marriage (ovett-Graff, 2004).

Before moving to his grandfather's property, Frost moved his family to Great Britain in 1912, disillusioned by the lukewarm successes he had experienced in the United States. In England he connected with several other poets, including T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, who…...

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Lovett-Graff, Bennett. "Robert Frost." 2004: Gale Encyclopedia of Popular Culture.

Meyers, Jeffrey. Robert Frost: a biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

Wikipedia contributors. 2006. "Robert Frost." Wikipedia. Last revision August 4, 2006. Accessed via the Internet 8/11/06.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost

"He gives his harness bells a shake / to ask if there is some mistake." The horse's action portrays the tendency of people to question those choices they don't understand. This scene can be interpreted as the disapproving voice of society voicing its demands on those of a more sensitive bent.
In much the same vein as the previous stanza, Frost shows a depth of human understanding (and misunderstanding). Our motives are ours alone, and try as we might, we cannot truly understand another.

Frost concludes the poem by commenting on the nature of obligations and they role they play in our choices. "The woods are lovely, dark and deep / but I have promises to keep / and miles to go before I sleep..."

While the author expresses his desire to linger amongst the magnificent forest and rest awhile, he must push on due to his obligations. Contrary to his true…...

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Bibliography

Frost, Robert. "Fire and Ice. "The Wondering Minstrels" 2001.  http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/779.html 

Frost, Robert. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." 1999.  http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/155.html 

Frost, Robert. "The Road Not Taken." 1999.  http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/51.html

Robert Frost treats several themes in his short lyrical poem, "The Road Not Taken." First, Frost focuses on the notion of choice and decision: the narrator is faced with a fork in the road and must choose which path to take. He momentarily wishes that he could travel both paths at once and still be "one traveler," (line 3). After hemming and hawing, the narrator chooses the path less trodden. hy the narrator made this decision is not made entirely clear, but Frost suggests that the traveler almost took pity on the road: "it was grassy and wanted wear," (line 8). However, he notices that although he imagined that the one path seemed less worn, that both were "really about the same," (line 10). Finally, the third stanza of Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" explicates the most significant theme of the poem: that of regret. This theme pervades the…...

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Works Cited

Frost, Robert. "The Road Not Taken." Mountain Interval. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1920; Bartleby.com, 1999.

A www.bartleby.com/119/.[31 Mar 2003].

Kidd. The poet's journey toward the night, his familiarity with the night, both represents the poet's search for "complete self-knowledge" and his willingness to explore unknown - again, mysterious - territory.
In the second stanza, Amano conjectures that Frost is putting the persona into the reader's consciousness in the form of a denial of others. The "watchman" is the only other human in this poem, of course, but beyond that, it may be that the speaker looks down rather than at the watchman because the speaker feels some guilt, or indifference. The watchman might be a timekeeper, as well, and the poet / speaker is reluctant to face the reality that his time is running out on this earth.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet / hen far away an interrupted cry / Came over houses from another street..." Frost writes in the third stanza. That cry,…...

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Works Cited

Amano, Kyoko. "Frost's ACQUAINTED WITH the NIGHT." Explicator 65.1 (2006): 39-42.

Frost, Robert. "Acquainted with the Night." Retrieved 6 Oct. 2007 at  http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1565.html .

Murray, Keat. "Robert Frost's Portrait of a Modern Mind: The Archetypal Resonance of Acquainted with the Night'." Midwest Quarterly 41.4 (2000): 370.

Frost's poem mirrors the Biblical Fall story. The narrator explicitly states that he "let it fall and break," just as Eve let herself break down and eat from the tree of forbidden fruit (line 13). The narrator also notes, "But I was well / Upon my way to sleep before it fell," (line 15). He had already begun to lose consciousness, to succumb to desire and dreaming. Thus the narrator takes full responsibility for his fall, offering a humanistic twist to the traditional Garden of Eden story. Rather than blaming the serpent for the evils of the world the narrator places human beings in a more spiritually powerful position. The narrator remains in full control of his consciousness even as he slips away. He claims that he "could tell / What form my dreaming was about to take," in lines 16 and 17. The two-pointed ladder, his symbolic Satan,…...

The third and fourth lines of the poem emphasize the idea of silence and separateness.

There was an hour

All still From the above lines it becomes clear that the poem is describing a particular moment or an important short space of time. This fits in well with the idea of the poem as an epiphany. The first action occurs when the poet leans against a flower and hears a voice.

When leaning with my head against a flower

I heard you talk.

This is a fantastic idea and it also forms part of Frost's mystical way of writing about nature. The poem requires a certain 'suspension of disbelief' if we are to penetrate to its deeper meaning. "One can respond to such poems...only by suspending one's reasonable awareness of what flowers can and cannot do." (Nitchie, W. Page 87) sense of nostalgia and longing is also created in the above lines. Diction and the…...

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Bibliography

Bidney, Martin. The secretive-playful epiphanies of Robert Frost: solitude, companionship, and the ambivalent imagination. Papers on Language & Literature; 6/22/2002;

Nitchie, W. Human Values in the Poetry of Robert Frost: A Study of a Poet's Convictions.; Duke University Press, 1960.

Robert Frost's New England Poetics Of Isolation And Community In Humanity's State Of Nature
"Something there is that doesn't love a wall," reads the first line of Robert Frost's classic poem, "Mending all." The narrative of Frost's most famous poem depicts two farmers, one "all" pine and the other apple orchard," who are engaged in the almost ritualistic action of summer fence mending amongst New England farmers. However, the apple farmer in the voice of the poet notes that his "apple trees will never get across/And eat the cones under his pines." Yet still, the farmers persist in the mending of fences and the keeping of barriers up between one another. This theme of attempted isolation and then connection on the part of Frost in his various poetic personas that is mirrored in the behavior of the natural world runs through "Mending all," "The Telephone," and "The ood-pile."

The larger theme of…...

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Works Cited

Frost, Robert. "Mending Wall." From University of Pennsylvania Poetry Website. Last modified: Friday, 06-Aug-2004  http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/frost-mending.html 

Frost, Robert. "The Telephone." From Literature Website.  http://www.lit.kobe-u.ac.jp/~hishika/frost.htm 

Frost, Robert. "The Wood-pile: New England 1915." From American Poems Website.

 http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/robertfrost/12061

Frost's piece "Fire and Ice" is also rich with metaphors about the human condition. Frost begins his piece with "Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice." Again at first glance, frost appears to be discussing the end of the world. However, his next line "From what I've tasted of desire, I'll hold with those who favor fire." Frost appears to be discussing the end of the human soul in terms of human reasoning, in that he is choosing fire, representing the desire of mankind, which can certainly be the cause behind the destruction of one's soul. His next stanza, "But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to know that for destruction ice is also great and would suffice," also shows this representation of the human emotion as being the cause for ending. He relates ice to hate, representing…...

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References

Frost, R. (1995). Collected poems, prose and plays. Ed. R. Poirier. New York: Library of America.

Frost, R. Fire and ice. Retrieved July 17, 2005 from Bartleby. Web site:  http://www.bartleby.com/155/2.html .

Frost R. Nothing Gold can Stay. Retrieved July 17, 2005 from Modern American Poetry. Web site:  http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/gold.htm

The last stanza is the protagonist's projection of what he thinks the future will hold. He imagines himself relating this day with a sigh to another, and letting them know that when he came to the fork in the road he took the road less traveled, and that made all the difference.

We must remember two things the author said, first it is the story of his friend, Edward Thomas, and second Frost described this poem as "tricky" (Grimes, 2006). Though the roads are described as being for all intents and purposes equal it is obvious they are not. The first road is "bent in the under growth" while the second is "grassy," "wanted wear" and "the better claim." The protagonist took the second road. In other words he took the easy way. The protagonist asserts that he would like to take both roads, and understands he will never have this…...

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References

Grimes, L.S. (2006, November 13). Robert Frost's tricky poem: Analysis of the road not taken. Suite101.com. Retrieved September 18, 2010, from Suite101.com: http://www.suite101.com/content/robert-frost-s-tricky-poem-a8712

Frost, R. (1920). The road not taken. Mountain interval. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 75. In Bartleby.com. (1999). Retrieved Septmber 18, 2010, from:  http://www.bartleby.com/119/1.html

The remainder of the poem assumes a more regularly rhythmic form, although the meter is not strict. Some of the remaining lines and stanzas follow an iambic hexameter, such as stanza three. However, many of the lines are in anapestic hexameter, or contain combinations of various meters. The poet inserts dactylic and anapestic feet along with iambic and also trochaic ones for intensity and variation, much as one would read a bedside story to a child.
Throughout the poem/story the narrator uses active voice, encouraging the listener to become further absorbed in the tale. Moreover, the active voice dramatizes the personification of the wind and window flower, the male and female protagonists in the tale. For instance, "He marked her through the pane," (line 9). When the speaker addresses the audience he uses imperative verbs: "Lovers, forget your love," (line 1). Although the wind performs most of the action in…...

Frost Home
Frost's Sense of Home

Robert Frost is one of the most prominent American poets of the twentieth century, with poems that manage to evoke elegance and wisdom while remaining earthy and true to the straightforward American character at the same time. At the same time, there is often a sense of seeming directionless and uncertain, which is of course the flipside of the freedom and self-determination of the American way. Tracing these elements in Frost's poetry leads to the recognition of a certain recurrent theme: the sense of home and belonging, often represented through its lacking. That is, Frost is able to evoke a clear sense of the feeling of "home" in certain poems, while at other times he uses similar sentiments in their opposite incarnations to evoke a sense of strangeness or a lack of "home" feelings. The following paragraphs will examine how Frost is able to accomplish this…...

Robert Frost
Both of Robert Frost's poems, "The Road Not Taken," and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" use natural imagery to illustrate the narrator's train of thought. However, the theme and tone of the two poems differ. In "The Road Not Taken," the narrator is caught at a crossroads. The poem deals with the difficulties of the decision he faces, and the mild regret that he experiences once he chooses a certain path. On the other hand, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" demonstrates decisive thought. The author clearly chooses to take a rest and watch the glory of the snow filling up the woods. Although his horse beckons him to leave, the narrator remains in awe of his natural surroundings and happy that he has had the opportunity to enjoy experiencing nature. In "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening," the author also indicates that he has…...

" The degree of importance ascribed to such a decision transcends a mere walk in the woods, and refers to a decision that changes one's life and which one desires to have reconsidered.
Readers can also infer that this work is literally about life's regrets due to the amount of importance which Frost attributes to the decision that the traveler makes. Literally, of course, the traveler is considering which road to take. Figuratively, however, this decision represents an important life altering choice. As such, it is not a decision that the traveler rushes into precipitously, which the following quotation, in which he analyzes the pair of paths, proves. "…long I stood / And looked down one as far as I could / To where it bent in the undergrowth; / Then took the other…" (Frost.) This passage indicates that author utilizes a copious amount of time in forming this decision. He…...

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Works Cited

Frost, Robert. "The Road Not Taken." www.poetryfoundation.org. 1916. Web.  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173536 

Liebman, Sheldon. "Robert Frost, Romantic." Twentieth Century Literature. 42(4), 417-437. 1996. Print.

Paton, Priscilla. "Apologizing for Robert Frost." South Atlantic Review. 63(1), 72-89. 1998. Print.

Phillips, Siobhan. "The Daily Living of Robert Frost." PMLA. 123(3), 598-613. 2008. Print.