Thursday, May 6, 2021

.” A Note on Robert Frost (1874-1963) Part - II

 

                               


                              


                                         

Robert Frost is considered as the national poet of America who expressed the beauty of American landscape, especially of New England region and the lives of villagers along with their problems and attitudes.  According to the American poet, Randall Jarrell, “No other living poet has written so well about the actions of ordinary man.” His style comprises various elements such as lyrics and narratives with characters and background drawn from New England. He chose rural themes and realistically described the lives of humble dwellers in the countryside, their occupations, family relationships, their joys and sorrows against background of Nature. He used a lot of metaphors in his poems. Most of his themes are about Nature and humanity such as : 1) Everyday life 2) Human contact with the natural world 3) Human love 4) Isolation of man 5) Life’s struggles 6) Nature in New England 7) Rural life and occupations 8)Self-realization 9) Simultaneous validity of opposing ideas etc. His works are noted for combining characteristics of both romanticism and modernism.

 He is not a provincial poet as he revealed the universal feeling of people and their struggles and their relationship with Nature. He spent his life as a poultry farmer in New Hampshire. For ten years he worked on his farm at Derry, New Hampshire and taught at Pinkerton Academy. He observed the laborious lives of farmers and the natural surroundings of the countryside. The clash between urban and rural lifestyles and the harsh conflicts seen in the natural world are realistically portrayed in his writings.

He is a classical lyricist influenced by early Romantic poets and contemporary British poets like Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke and Robert Graves. Frost was often compared to William Wordsworth as both chose to write in the language actually used by men in the country side. But unlike Wordsworth’s mystic and pantheistic approach, Frost used realistic portrayal of Nature and the relationship between Nature and man. His approach is deceptively simple and conceals many layers of meaning. His style is epigrammatic, simple and clear. He uses colloquial diction of New England peasants but which is however purified of all that is vulgar, slangy and coarse. His imagery is drawn from the most common and familiar objects of nature.

 Frost uses symbols and metaphors with subtle layers of meaning. His poems capture the rhythms and cadences and tones of human speech. He is not egotistical like Wordsworth in poetic treatment and maintains artistic detachment but is only subjective in some of the elegies he had written. Like Wordsworth he chose incidents and situations from common life and presented them in a language actually used by the common man. Both used metrical verse and tried to reproduce the conversational and tone and rhythm of the natural speech. In Wordsworth’s view the use of meter enhances the pleasure of poetry. In frost’s view free verse is like playing tennis without a net. As far as technique is concerned Frost’s poems are remarkably flawless. Unlike Wordsworth, he is a conscious artist and revised his poems carefully. The rich texture of his verse conceals many hidden layers of meaning. 

 Richard Wilbur says that Frost did not use colloquial language of an uneducated farmer boy but rather a beautifully refines colloquial idiom set to metrical arrangement. He wrote lyrics, narrative poems, dramatic lyrics and monologues.  Skilful use of metaphors and symbols is one of the elements of his poetic style. Fact and fancy are beautifully mingled in his lyrics. His language is simple but highly suggestive. He used a conversational style with New England speech rhythms and colloquial idiom. His use of broken and loose syntax with parentheses, ellipses, unfinished sentences with abrupt openings and repetitions make him a modern poet of American countryside. Though he wrote on regional themes, he is quintessentially “a modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony.” His style could be described as conversational, realistic, rural(pastoral) and introspective. Ezra Pound wrote a review on Frost’s poem “A Boy’s Will” and said “, Frost has the good sense to speak naturally and to paint the thing, the thing as he sees it.” Amy Lowell reviewed “North of Boston” in the “New republic” and praised Frost’s original approach, unusual power and sincerity.

Simplicity, profundity, lucidity and subtlety are the hallmarks of his poetry. Frost’s best poetry is concerned with the drama of man Nature. Frost believes that man should live in harmony with Nature and not against Nature and natural process. The aphoristic lines in his poetry give to them a didactic quality. Louis Untermeyer says that Frost’s poetry is “a poetry which finds a response on every level which begins in delight and ends in wisdom.” Though his poems seem simple they are subtle and intricate with a rich texture and there we find layers within layers of meaning. He is a great experimentalist with various stanzaic forms. He has experimented with odes, satires, dramatic monologues and dialogues. He has employed ballad meter, Terza Rima, sonnets, couplets and blank verse.  He seems to have a special liking for the use of the quatrain form with simple rhymes like abab and abcb.  Edwin Arlington Robinson, another new England poet, was also noted for technical experimentation and used traditional verse forms like sonnet, ballad and blank verse and won three Pulitzer prizes.

 Robert Frost won Pulitzer prize four times in his life : for New Hampshire(1923), “Collected Poems(1930), “A further Range(1936) and “A witness Tree(1942. He published his first collection of poems “A Boy’s Will” in 1913. His collected poems “North of Boston” (1914) contains many of his popular poems like “Mending Wall”, “Death of the Hired man”, “Home Burial”, “Blueberries” and “Apple Picking”. His famous poem “Stopping By woods on a snowy evening” is from his collection “New Hampshire” (1923). Another famous poem “Birches” is seen in his third collection “Mountain Interval” published in 1916.

Robert Frost was regarded as America’s greatest literary figure and won much recognition and reputation during his lifetime. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic contribution. On July 22,1961 he was named the Poet laureate of Vermont. He was the Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress (1958-1959). He recited his poem “Gift Outright” at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961. He served as Poet in Residence at Middlebury College, Harvard University (1939-1943); at Dartmouth College (1943-1949), at Amherst College, the University of Michigan (1949-1963), at Columbia University and at Yale University. Frost was the Founder of the Bread Loaf School and Conference of English at Middlebury College. John F. Kennedy complimented Robert frost that he “brought an unsparing instinct for reality to bear on the platitudes and pieties of society” and that “he laid out a vision for an America as much respected for its civilization as for its strength.”

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      6th May, 2021                                                  Somaseshu Gutala


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