ROBERT FROST AND HIS POETRY

By: Anooj Patel“No poet is more emblematically American than Robert Frost”(Thompson, Lawrence).

Frost’s History Robert Frost was born on

March 26, 1874 in San Francisco

After 12 Years, his father, William Prescott Frost Jr., died From TB.

He and his mother, along with his sister, moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Frost’s History He went to high school there, where he met his

future love, Elinor White. After he graduated high school, he went to

Dartmouth University for several months. He ended up leaving.

He got his first poem published in a New York journal. The poem was “My Butterfly: an Elegy”

He ended up proposing to Elinor, but he got rejected. He later tried again and they ended up getting married and having a child, named Elliot.

Frost’s History Frost moved his family to a farm in New

Hampshire where they attempted to settle down and live a slightly modest life.

Though they attempted to make a family, they had many issues as 2 of their children developed mental illnesses and 2 of them died.

Despite their hardships, Frost ended up setting into the farm life and began writing poems about the countryside.

Issues arose as only 2 of his poems were actually able to be published.

Frost’s History In 1912, they both decide to move to England in

search for publishers that were looking for new poets.

He luckily finds a publisher, which he sticks with throughout his life time.

His fame rises as he meets other famous poets until war breaks out in 1914.

In hopes of evading the war, Frost and his wife leave for the US in 1915.

On his return to the US, he was overwhelmed in popularity.

Frost’s History He bought a farm again in New

Hampshire and settles down. For 45 Years he writes poems and

lectures on and off at universities such as Dartmouth and University of Michigan.

Over his lifespan, he earned many honorary awards.

He sadly died on January 29, 1963

Awards/Achievements He received 4 Pulitzer Prizes in 1923,

1931, 1937, and 1943. He offered to recited his poem, “ The Gift

Outright” at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration address. He accepted to recite it.

He earned 40 honorary degrees from various different universities.

Robert Frost’s Writing Style

His exact style is very difficult to pin point from his poems

He uses an extensive amount of symbols within his poetry

His writing style is a combination of 20th century modernism and 19th century Romanticism

He rears away from standard modernistic writing style unlike his contemporaries.

Robert Frost’s Writing Style

He avoided “artificial” poetic diction by employing the accent of a soft spoken New Englander.

Frost’s belief was to write with common experience but uncommon in expression.

Frost used nature to illustrate the human psychological day to day feelings.

In his poems, he uses a good deal of imagery to further depict the scenario the protagonist is in.

Birches (1916)Summary: When the speaker sees bent birch trees, he likes

to think that they are bent because boys have been “swinging” them.

He knows that they are, in fact, bent by ice storms. Yet he prefers his vision of a boy climbing a tree carefully and then swinging at the tree’s crest to the ground.

He used to do this himself and dreams of going back to those days. He likens birch swinging to getting “away from the earth awhile” and then coming back.

Birches Analysis Themes prevalent within the poem: Alienation: Felt by the boys, trees and the

narrator. Estrangement: Seen again with the boy

and even the narrator. Journey of Life: Frost, like in other poems,

uses nature (the woods) as a metaphor. In this case, he describes the path of life to a journey through woods.

Birches Analysis A Major symbol with this poem, is the

Birches They represent the alienation that

humans feel physiologically, as these birches are in competition with the other “straighter, darker trees.”

Another important symbol is the boy, that the narrator imagines. The boy represents the destruction, and self destruction that is formed from this estrangement that he feels.

The Road Not Taken Summary: The narrator comes upon a fork in the road while

walking through woods. He considers both paths and concludes that each one is

equally well-traveled and appealing. After choosing one of the roads, the narrator tells himself that he will come back to this fork one day in order to try the other road.

However, he realizes that it is unlikely that he will ever have the opportunity to come back to this specific point in time because his choice of path will simply lead to other forks in the road (and other decisions).

The narrator ends on a nostalgic note, wondering how different things would have been had he chosen the other path.

The Road Not Taken Analysis

Theme: Individualism: The Narrator is forced to come up with a decision on the spot for which road to take.

Symbols: Narrator’s Interaction: Frost takes the simple

idea of choosing a path, in which both are similar, and relating it under the text to a decision making many of us face today.

The “Ruts” in the road: Frost uses these ruts to symbolize the past egoists who pasted before him and placed the ruts into the earth.

Work Cited "Robert Lee Frost." 2013. The Biography Channel website.

Mar 16 2013. http://www.biography.com/people/robert-frost-20796091.

"Robert Frost." : The Poetry Foundation. N.p., 2013. Web. 16 Mar. 2013. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/robert-frost.

Lewis, Brian. "Figurative Language." ROBERT FROST. N.p., 2011. Web. 18 Mar. 2013. https://www.msu.edu/~lewisbr4/frost.htm.