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
