An Analysis Of Robert Frost's Poem 'Acquainted With The Night'

After reading Robert Frost’s poem, “Acquainted with the Night”, you may get the feeling of a men who’s feeling lonely and depressed. But, according to the article Frost's “Acquainted With the Night” by kyoko Amono, critics Keat Murray and Richard Poirier say, “Robert Frost’s poems are often about the poet’s process—the choices he has to make—in writing a poem.” (Amano, p. 39). When Robert Frost wrote “Acquainted with the Night” in 1928, the literary world was going through a transformation, and Frost found himself not going along with the change. As Richard Poirer stated in his book, “Frost offers a literary criticism that is directed toward his contemporary poets, who, in modernizing poetry, strayed away from the closed-form poetry. Written at the peak of the American modernist movement in 1928, ‘Acquainted with the Night’ emphasizes the importance of pushing limits and exploring the unknown, while remaining within the

With the lines “I have been one acquainted with the night/ I have outwalked the furthest city light/I have passed by the watchman on his beat/ And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.” implies that a writer does not fear seeking different ways to write and does not feel the need to explain why. The “watchman” could symbolize a critic or editor that watches out for those who wander too far from traditional writing. Although this person may inspire fear the writer does not stop from seeing what is beyond, most of the time the writer returns to the traditional style with a little change.
There is a constant need to go beyond what is usually accepted and try to create something new by pushing the boundaries of tradition. Acquainted with the Night describes the very process and perhaps emotional process that each writer of any type of literature goes through when creating a new piece. They have the choice to stay within the “city light” or to become one “acquainted with the