Robert Frost: A Unique American Poet - Essay Example

Robert Frost - A Unique American Poet Robert Frost is acclaimed as one of the best American poets of all time. His poems inspire readers of all ages, and he has been celebrated for his accomplishments both nationally and world wide. A four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the United States Senate adopted national resolution in his honor on his 75th birthday. He was appointed as the Library of Congress' poetry consultant in 1958 and recited his poem "The Gift Outright" at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. This was the first time that a poet had ever been invited to recite at an inauguration (Cuneo). Frost moved from San Francisco to Massachusetts as a child. He began writing poetry in high school, where he was the co-valedictorian along with his future wife. He left Dartmouth after a very short stay and began teaching school. His first poem, "My Butterfly," sold in 1894 to a New York literary magazine called The Independent. After another failed attempt at college due to health concerns, he moved to New Hampshire and wrote prolifically for nine years. Then, in 1912, Frost and his family moved to London. The next year, he published his first book of poems entitled A Boys Will and followed it with North of Boston the next year (Pritchard and Burnshaw). When WWI looked imminent, Frost returned to the United States where he wrote poetry with more and more success. He taught at such prestigious universities as the University of Michigan, Dartmouth College and Amherst College (Pritchard and Burnshaw). He wrote eleven more volumes of poetry between 1916 and 1962, the last being on his 88th birthday. He won Pulitzer Prizes for his books New Hampshire, West-Running Brook and A Further Range. He died in 1963 (Cuneo). Frost had many influences on his poetry and writing. Two of the most important were his physical setting and his tragic personal life. Frost told his friend, Sidney, Cox that "The true poet's pleasure lay in making his own words where he goes and "we write of things we see and we write in accents we hear" (Pritchard and Burnshaw). He was determined to leave a piece of his life in every poem. His volumes New Hampshire and North of Boston are particularly imagistic and informative about rural life and farming. His good friend and critic Ezra Pound noted that he knew more about farming after reading these works of Frost's (Pritchard and Burnshaw). Unfortunately, Frost's own personal tragedies were abundant. He was first of all diagnosed with tuberculosis which hindered his higher education prompted his move to the country. Later, both Oxford and Cambridge, schools he had attended briefly for lecturing purposes, gave him honorary degrees (Cuneo). Two of his children died in infancy, his youngest daughter died slowly while giving birth, and his son committed suicide in 1940. Another daughter had to be institutionalized because of a mental disorder from which Frost's sister also suffered. In addition, his beloved wife whom he had married just after they both graduated from high school, died from sudden heart failure in 1938. Frost lived 50 years after her death (Pritchard and Burnshaw). His poems of the 1930s and 1940s reflect these sad events. In his book A Witness Tree, poems such as "the Silken Tent," "I Could Give All to Time" and "Never Again Would Birds' Songs Be the Same" revealed a dark tone not seen earlier in his poems. Some of his critics yearned for the older, more sympathetic Frost, but Frost had lost interest in writing his dramatic monologues and dialogues that had earned him early fame. His poems in this era of personal tragedy became deeper and more somber, sarcastic and socio-politically argumentative (Pritchard and Burnshaw). Frost's style is hard to discern for most critics. Style is described by Thompson as "the way someone "carried himself toward his ideas and deeds." Most critics agree that while Frost's poems make use of simple, conversational language, his complexity of thought and wit are evident. His style is one of a self-professed fascination with words (Thompson). Frost himself even commented in a letter to his friend Louis Untermeyer in 1924 that "All the fun's in how you say a thing," which is reported in Lawrence Thompson's book entitled, Selected Letters of Robert Frost. Yet poets also agree that Frost's style is hard to pinpoint. One helpful description concerns Thompson's analysis of Frost's style as one of "choice words or diction." He expresses his ideas through meter and rhythms, making personal experiences seem well-crafted (Pritchard and Burnshaw). "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" is an example of this style. The sounds are soft such as in the line 'sweep of easy wind and downy flake'. The rhyme scheme aaba bbcb, moves the poem along as a kind of song. If the reader never reads it on any level other than the literal, it is still a beautiful poem about Frost's natural environment. Frost also uses metaphors to make seemingly regular objects relate to people on a grander scale. For example, in "The Road Not Taken," Frost compares a less worn path to alternate pathways in life, using the metaphor to make people consider those life-changing decisions. Yet as discussed above, Frost did have a grimmer side, especially after the personal tragedies he endured. In "Out, Out" Frost examines a tragedy of the death of a young boy (which actually was drawn from a news story), from the perspective that death is common and nobody can spare time to mourn. Therefore, many critics of poetry have refrained from classifying him. Thompson cites Isidor Schneider who called Frost simply a "gnome." He also cites Cleanth Brooks who gave a slightly longer description of Frost's style: Frost's character or poetic mask may be described as the sensitive New Englander. Possessed of natural wisdom; dry and laconic when serious; genial and whimsical when not; a character who is uneasy with hyperbole and prefers to use understatement to risking possible overstatementstyle is the way he carries himself toward his ideas and deeds" (Thompson). For this reason, Frost cannot be called a Romantic poet or a transcendental poet, the styles that comprised the years in which Frost wrote most of his poems. He will ever be preserved as a prolific writer who embodied a style of his own experiences and environment delivered through interestingly crafted words. The ideas grow from the simple into complex themes that have offered readers matter to discuss for years. American should be proud of its award winning poet Robert Frost. Works Cited Cuneo, Erin. "Robert Frost - 1874-1963." Available from http://www.ncteamamericancollection.org/litmap/frost_robert_ca.htm Pritchard William, H. and Burnshaw, Stanley. "Frost's Life and Career." Modern American Poetry. Available from http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/life.htm. Retrieved May 31, 2006 Thompson, Lawrence Ed. "Frost's Style." Selected Letters of Robert Frost. New York: Holt,. 1964 "The Wondering Minstrels." Available from http://www.cs.rice.edu/ssiyer/ minstrels/index_poet_F.html#Frost. Retrieved May 31, 2006. Read More