Robert Frost: Poetic Qualities

 Robert Frost: Poetic Qualities

With the publication of “A Boy’s Will” (1913) and “North to Boston” (1914) Frost became the first American poet to be widely read.
Frost has been regarded as a “regional poet”. His region was New England of two best states in U.S.A. He never felt the slightest desire to include all America within the scope of his poetry. His regionalism resembles from Emily Dickinson’s. The New England provides him with the stories, attitudes, characters, which are appropriate to his needs. He falls in love with the New England tradition and it gives him strength. His work seems to capture the vanished joys of apple picking, hay-making, the sleep of an old man alone in an old farmhouse, the cleaning of the pasture spring. No American writer knows the subjects, people and places as thoroughly as Frost does. Frost is certainly a realist. He never says too much. In stories, he uses suggestion and understatement.

Frost is chiefly lyrical. The pomes are a spontaneous expression of the youthful heart. Frost shows emotion, imagery and song. As regards imagery, they are full of beauties of the darkness of late autumn, still depths of winter, and intensity of the swift summer. He has written lyrics light-hearted and humorous and philosophical. Often the two extremes are combines. He has written a few love lyrics too.

The form employed by Frost is dramatic. But in some of his most successful pieces he has subordinated both drama and character to straightforward poetic narrative. In “The Code” a farm hand tells how he killed the employer by burying him under a load of hay violating an unwritten law of the fields because of made some trivial sign on his work. Here Frost has sketched out, half-humorously a story showing peculiar local customs, the odd expressions of personal pride which develop in a remote rural community. In the “Witch of Coos” a humorously gruesome story of violence, brooding and hallucination appears what is probably the most unusual ghost in American literature. At once realistic and fantastic, cynically coarse and delicately beautiful, “Paul’s Wife” is an amazingly successful fusion of the most disparate qualities.
Frost showed a philosophical bent of mind from the very beginning. He does not have any philosophical system or set of beliefs. He inclines to the inquiring manner. Often he expresses himself in a humorous or satirical vein and shows an epigrammatic gift.

Sometimes we have a blend of the familiar essays and the parable in Frost’s philosophical poems with illustrative anecdotes. “Mending Walls” is a humorous portrayal through rural anecdote of the liberal, inquiring man confronted with the man of inertia. Then there are two poems of a different kind. “A Masque of Reason” and “A Masque of Mercy”, in which the poet undertakes, if not Milton’s task of justifying God’s ways to men at least the more modest task of speculating about them.

Many of Frost’s poems are capable of a symbolic interpretation. The surface meaning of “Mending Wall” is ‘Good fences make good neighbours’ but symbolically the poem states the serious problem of our times. Should national boundaries be made stronger for our protection or should they be removed since they restrict our progress towards international brotherhood? “The Mountain” symbolizes the un-inquisitive, the unadventurous and the un-ambitious spirit. “The Road Not Taken” symbolically deals with the choice problem.

Frost is not a Nature poet in the tradition of Wordsworth. He insists upon the boundaries between man and the forces of Nature. He sees no pervading spirit in the natural world and regards it as impersonal and unfeeling. He treats nature both as comfort and menace.

Frost shows a strong disinclination towards city life. He has written no poems on friendship. He has written love poems, but misunderstanding is a constant theme in them. His poetry has curious anti-social quality. Almost every poem in “North of Boston” deals with the theme of alienation. “Desert Places” describes a similar mood and situation. Many of his poems are about the sense and the feeling of loneliness not a peculiarly American dilemma but as a universal situation. Sometimes he approaches this problem in an optimistic manner as in “Our Hold on the Planet”.

A critic has listed the typical qualities of Frost’s poetry like Frost’s tenderness, sadness and humour; his seriousness and honesty; his sorrowful acceptance of things as they are without exaggeration or explanation; his many poems with real people, real speech, real thoughts and real emotions; subtlety and exactness and a classical under-statement and restraint.
In conclusion it may be pointed out that Frost has been described as a symbolist, a spiritual drifter, a home-spun philosopher, a lyricist, a moralist, a preacher and a farmer who writes verse.

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Frost's theme of isolation

 Frost's theme of isolation

One of the most striking themes of Frost is man’s isolation in the universe or man’s sense of alienation from his environment. There is in Frost’s poetry a curious anti-social quality, far from Whitman’s dear love of comrades. He has a strong disinclination towards city life which has gone beyond a dislike of the city life. For instance, he has written no poems of friendship. He has written love-poems but misunderstandings are a constant theme in them, produced by some deep solitariness, some unbreakable barrier between soul and soul.

A circumstance in Frost’s personal life too contributed to the theme of isolation. Frost’s sister, Jeanie, had become totally alienated from the world, unable to accept the coarseness and brutality of existence. Frost’s sadness in being unable to dissuade her from the view of things is similar to the plight of the husband in “Home Burial”. The young woman in this poem cannot reconcile herself to the death of her child and becomes totally alienated.

Frost in his poems isolates the individual. Poem after poem shows the speaker running off or living the life alone. He who flees goes to confront the vast enigma of space and the night.

The memorable female figures in his poems all show some kind of singularity. If loneliness may be stimulating for the male, for the female it is likely to be disastrous.

In “Acquainted with the Night”, the word “night” may be interpreted in several ways. But one convincing interpretation is Nature. Throughout the poem there are people – seen, heard, or known to be there – but there is no direct contact with Nature. Nature does not govern man’s affairs but proclaims the time. The writer here shows his realization and understanding of his predicament:

One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

This poem deserves comparison with “Desert Places” which too has loneliness or isolation as its theme. All animals have taken shelter in their lairs. The poet is oppressed by a feeling of loneliness:

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less.

The poet is not afraid of the empty spaces between the stars, stars on which there is no human race. Why should they scare him with their empty spaces, when the poet has his own “desert places” to scare him? The pathos of this poem is very touching:

I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

A poem called “The Fear” has the following concluding lines:

You understand that we have to be careful.
This is a very, very lonely place.

“Bereft”, too deals with this theme. “It portrays a bleak realization of absolute loneliness, a sudden, despairing sense of loss”. In this poem there is absolutely no relief from the loneliness. The poem moves in part of the same lines as “Desert Places”, from a scene of threatening images and desolation to still greater loneliness. Loneliness could not have been expressed more simply, more emphatically and more pathetically than in the concluding lines:

World I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word I was in my life alone,
Word I had no one left but God.

The feeling of isolation in this poem lends poignancy to the scene, while the identification of hostility of Nature aggravates the feeling of isolation. The last line is not a cry of faith but an agonized scene of absolute mourning. The emotional emphasis is on “no one”.

Through Frost discusses the theme of alienation yet he does not approve it. It is true that he does not condemn it either. He portrays the barriers between man and man and to make dramatic projection of the theme of isolation. He dislikes isolation, but he sees its inevitability.

To the ordinary reader, such poems seem to imply a pessimistic view of human life. Frost regards the sense of isolation, not as a peculiarly American dilemma but as a universal situation. The poems having this theme are therefore truly realistic. Sometimes Frost approaches the problem of isolation in an optimistic manner as in “Our Hold on the Planet”.

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Frost's treatment of nature

Frost's treatment of nature

Robert Frost depicts the bright and the dark aspects, the benevolent and the hostile forces of Nature in his poems on realistic terms.

Critics have a difference of opinion over his designation of a poet of Nature. Alvarez says that:

“Frost is not a Nature poet”.

One point of view on which almost all the critics agree is Frost’s minute observation and accurate description of the different aspects of nature in his poems. Schneider says:

“The descriptive power of Mr. Frost is to me the most wonderful thing in his poetry. A snowfall, a spring thaw, a bending tree, a valley mist, a brook, these are brought into the experience of the reader”.

For illustration, these lines from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” may be quoted:

“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,”

These lines depict not only the beauty and the mystery of the snow filled woods which hold the poet almost spell-bound but also describe the helplessness of the poet who has no time because of his social commitments. Thus the beauty of Nature and obligations of human life are treated by Frost as two aspects of poet’s one whole experience in these lines.
Frost is primarily a realist who abstruse the things around him and in nature as they are and describes them as such. That is why nature changes its character from poem to poem in his poetry.

In “Two Tramps in Mud Time”, if on the one hand, he shows New England poised between cold and warmth, winter and spring, on the other hand, he does not miss to show the turmoil and storm brewing under the apparently beautiful calm of nature. Therefore, he interrupts his genial description of the April weather to warm:

“Be glad of water, but don’t forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal firth after the sun is set
And snow on the water its crystal teeth.”

Frost pastoral element is dominant in Frost’s poetry. That is why he is considered as a poet of pastures and plains, mountains and rivers, woods and gardens, groves and bowers, fruits and flowers, seeds and birds as he was a farmer. Hence, nature was his constant companion. But what is noticeable in his poetry is that even in the poems such as “Pastures”, “Birches”, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, “West Running Brook”, “After Apple Picking”, “An Old Man’s Winter Night” and “Mending Wall” it is the human factor which is predominant and nature is an integral part of the themes of the poems. For worries and disappointments in life make life miserable but the pet still clings to it because he loves the earth.

Frost unlike Wordsworth is not a nature mystic. He does not see any affinity between nature and man nor does he find any spirit or power pervading it. Nor does he find any healing power in it which can cure the ills of society and man. For him nature is alien to man.

Frost’s attitude to nature reflects the spirit of the present age whose attitude to nature, like all other things, is scientific and realistic. That is why he has not formulated any philosophy about nature. Nor do his poems display the rare exalted moments which are displayed in the poems of the romantic age, particularly in those if Wordsworth. Frost’s poems describe simply his daily and common experience.

The imagery of Frost’s poems is also drawn upon the objects of nature.

“Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning” (Birches)

“And life is too much like a pathless wood” (Birches)

“The world of hoary grass” (After Apple Picking)

“A leaping tongue of bloom” (The Tuft of Flower)

“His long scythe whispering to the ground” (The Tuft of Flower)

These are some of the images which have locked his poem with beauty and sense. Though Frost is philosophic and not didactic yet his poems usually convey the wisdom of his experience which may be termed as a moral.

Thus, the panorama of nature presented in Frost’s poems not only offers a feast of beauty to the view of the reader but also provides him awareness of life. His sarcastic qualities find full expression in the description of the scenes of nature. In the light of these views Frost may safely be considered as a poet who gave and entirely new concept of nature and is one of the great poets of nature.

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Frost sane realist not a pessimist

 Frost sane realist not a pessimist

Frost is a great artist and essentially a poet but not a philosopher – he is a philosopher poet. The writings of a poet are largely dictated by the rhythms of his moods. Expecting any systematic exposition of philosophy from a poet is undesirable and totally unwarranted. However, from repeated expression of certain views in poem after poem, one can extract certain basic concepts and thoughts of the poet.

Frost’s views about God, Nature and Man can be deduced from his poetry which reveal a large quantum of sanity and profundity. As Gibson puts that in Frost’s poetry, there is an undercurrent of ‘the clear stream of rich and ripe philosophy’.

Frost showed a philosophical bent of mind from the very beginning. But a philosophical anxiety, a social sadness becomes more obvious in his later poems. He does not have any philosophical system or set of beliefs. It is impossible to reduce Frost’s thinking to a diagrammatic accuracy. In this connection, Frost says:

We dance round in a ring and suppose
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

Frost does not manage to squeeze in among the ranks of great philosopher poets. Yet, the philosophy within his poetry calls our attention and cannot be dismissed as negligible or insignificant. He has clothed his philosophical thought in a naturally conventional style.

Frost’s ‘rich and ripe philosophy’ is obvious in everything he writes. The truths he seeks are innate in the heart of man and in common objects. But people forget and poetry, according to Frost, “makes you remember what you didn’t know you knew”. A poem provides an immediate experience which “begins in delight and ends in wisdom”. However, his persistent search for truths does not mean that Frost is a grim philosopher. His touch is always light.

With reference to any philosophical absolutes, Frost is a skeptic. He prefers the wisdom that is nourished by understanding, tolerance and observation. His value as a philosopher lies in the home-spun intelligence. There can be no better proof of Frost’s home-spun philosophy than the following lines:

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in, (The Death of the Hired Man)

Earth’s the right place for love
I do not know where it’s likely to go better. (Birches)

We love the things we love for what they are. (Hyla Brook)

His poems provide ample wisdom of a prudential kind which should serve as effective guidelines to our everyday conduct. He is a classicist in his belief. He advocates self-reliance and integrity. He looks upon integrity as operating through a variety of choice rather than between evil and good.

Though there is no fixed line between wrong and right,
There are roughly zones whose laws must be obeyed.

Frost is basically a philosophic poet who often uses the pastoral mode as a vehicle for his inquiries into the nature and meaning of life. His irony, didacticism and lyricism, all serve this end. Yet, so completely are form and content united in his work that it is scarcely possible to remove the philosophical element in any poem without completely dislocating it.

Frost’s poetry incorporates his philosophy. Frost’s poetry is full of thoughts, ideas and vision of life. But he is not to be considered a philosopher. His philosophy is an integral part of his poetry. But one must also keep at the back of one’s mind that his philosophy is not essential for the appreciation of his poetry. Like Wordsworth and Yeats, Frost’s ideas have grown along with his verse.

To conclude, it is best to quote Lawrence Thompson: ‘this primary artistic achievement, which is an enviable one, in spite of shortcomings, rests on his blending of though and emotion and symbolic imagery within the confines of the lyric’.

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