Into the Woods

Robert Frost was an American poet who was known for his vivid images of nature and farm life in his work. He was highly regarded as one of the most influential and popular American poets of the twentieth century. He has received various awards such as the Congressional Gold Medal and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, which he won four times. Many critics over the years have analyzed Frost’s poetry, all of them eager to jump into the woods of complexity that is Robert Frost.

Frost was known for writing poetry with an emphasis on nature. He used the changing of the seasons to symbolize events that were also occurring in the lives of the characters portrayed in his poems as well as to give a vivid depiction of the human condition. For instance, in “Nothing Gold Can Stay”, Frost opens the poem with a line about the shade of the leaves, but by the end of the poem it becomes evident that the gold in which he is describing has little to do with nature, but rather is a depiction of things valued in life and the frailty there of. Mordecai Marcus stated in his book The Poems of Robert Frost: an explication, “Frost's view resembles Emerson's idea that being born into this world is the fall implying that the suffering and decay brought by natural processes are what we know of evil… The "Nothing" of the last line, repeated from the title, receives special emphasis; the gold that cannot stay comes to represent all perfections” (Marcus) Using nature as a means to symbolize the cycle of human existence was a common thread in a large number of Frost’s poems.

Frost was also praised for the depth of meaning behind his poetry and yet the simplistic and toneless language in which he used to write it. Randall Jarrell noted the rawness of Frost’s poetry by...

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...literary world. Frost explores many themes through an organic depiction of human responses to life. As critics have come to find, there is much more complexity to Robert Frost’s work than the language in which he uses to write it.

Works Cited

Jarrell, Randall. "The Other Frost." Poetry and the Age. New York: Vintage Books, 1953.

Marcus, Mordecai. "On "Nothing Gold Can Stay"" On "Nothing Gold Can Stay" Web. 12 Mar.

2014.

Marson, Janyce. "Critical Contexts: Robert Frost: A Look At The Critical Reception."

Critical Insights: Robert Frost (2010): 40-60. Literary Reference Center. Web. 12 Mar.

2014.

Valassis, Anastasia Vahaviolos. "Critical Contexts: The Paradoxes Of Robert Frost: A

Meditation On "Discordant Elements.." Critical Insights: Robert Frost (2010): 76-91.

Literary Reference Center. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.