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Death in poetry
Symbolism used in poem stopping by woods on snowy evening
Death in modern poetry
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Life and death are two things that we as humans must all face. The road from one to the other, from life to death, is a long and at times, both joyous and painful one. Robert Frost’s poems are a prime example of these times and trials. The poems I chose for this paper highlight them, and with Frost’s allegory, they present a sort of silver lining to the string of dark and dreary words he’s pieced together for these poems. The depressing tone to the poems “Acquainted with the Night”, “Nothing Gold Can Stay”, and “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowing Evening” could be attributed to the death of many of Frost’s family members, and how despite this he overcame it all, and at the end of his life, was a successful writer. These poems to not go into great explanation of the details of Frost’s life, however, I believe that they are representations of the things path that he’s walked, and how he viewed his actions and death in general. The first line in the poem, “I have been one acquainted with the night.” (Frost) – suggests that Frost, or the personified character in the poem states that he has met darkness. This does not describe death, more so trials and tribulations in life that we have all faced. There doesn’t need any specifics to this, simply because not everyone’s life goes along the same track or path. The second stanza, “I have walked out in rain – and back in rain.” – is letting us know that Frost has been in and out of sadness and depression. A metaphor for such sadness could be likened to rain. The next two lines give a better description of how this poem is a better representation of how difficult life can be for us all. “I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane.” (Frost) I belie... ... middle of paper ... ...Cited Doyle, John Robert, Jr. 1988. The Literature Resource Center. 3 August 2010 . Frost, Robert. New Enlarged Anthology of Robert Frost's Poems. New York: Washington Square Press, 1971. Hotchman, Jhan. "An overview of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." Literature Resource Center. 3 August 2010 . Klinkowitz, Jerome and Patricia B Wallace. The Norton Anthology of Americal Literature. Seventh. Vol. Volume D. New York City: Norton, 2007, 2003, 1998, 1994, 1989, 1985, 1979. 5 vols. Murray, Keat. Literature Resource Center. 1 August 2010 .
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007. 348-350. Print.
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words,” Robert Frost once said. As is made fairly obvious by this quote, Frost was an adroit thinker. It seems like he spent much of his life thinking about the little things. He often pondered the meaning and symbolism of things he found in nature. Many readers find Robert Frost’s poems to be straightforward, yet his work contains deeper layers of complexity beneath the surface. His poems are not what they seem to be at first glance. These deeper layers of complexity can be clearly seen in his poems “The Road Not Taken”, “Fire and Ice”, and “Birches”.
Levine, Robert S. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th Edition. Volume B. New York: Norton, 2007. 1696. Print.
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine, eds. The Norton Anthology: American Literature. 8th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2012. Print.
Frost is far more than the simple agrarian writer some claim him to be. He is deceptively simple at first glance, writing poetry that is easy to understand on an immediate, superficial level. Closer examination of his texts, however, reveal his thoughts on deeply troubling psychological states of living in a modern world. As bombs exploded and bodies piled up in the World Wars, people were forced to consider not only death, but the aspects of human nature that could allow such atrocities to occur. By using natural themes and images to present modernist concerns, Frost creates poetry that both soothes his readers and asks them to consider the true nature of the world and themselves.
Robert Frost, an infamous poet best known for his original poetic technique, displays a reoccurring idea or theme of loneliness and isolation throughout many of his published works. The ways in which Frost represents and symbolizes ideas of solitude and desolation in poems are somehow slightly or very different. Loneliness and isolation are illustrated through Frost’s use of the dark night as well as depression in “Acquainted With the Night”, the objects the speaker encounters in “Waiting”, and the sense of abandonment and death in “Ghost House.”
Life is imperfect and Frost relies mostly on his sporadic iambic pentameter pattern and enjambment of sentences in “Out, out –” to highlight that. Poets incorporate iambic pentameter in their works so that the tone, diction, and overall language flows nicely together. But Frost does not follow this exact closed form of poetry. Instead, his lines vary. The first verse of “Out, out” indeed follows five iambs but the second verse
Stern, Fred. “Robert Frost: One Acquainted with the Night.” World & I, vol. 28, no.3, Mar 2013, p. 2 EBSCO/host, proxy.campbell.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pw&AN=87555602&site=pov-live.
Belasco, Susan, and Linck Johnson, eds. The Bedford Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1, 2nd Ed., Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. 1190-1203. Print.
“I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference” (Frost 19-20). Many famous lines like these have been written at different periods of Robert Frost’s life. Most of his poems can tie back to a specific time and place in Frost’s lifetime. Different poems convey various emotions as Frost writes about many personal struggles and successes that he encountered in his lifetime. Robert Frost portrays his childhood, marriage, and adulthood through his various poems, like “A Peck of Gold,” “Birches,” ”The Thatch,” and “The Birds Do Thus.”
Robert Frost is a renowned poet of his time. He took us to new heights with his work, as it often makes us think outside the box. Frost has won numerous amounts of prizes for his works, and also steps out of poetry. Showing us that he is very versatile when it comes to writing. Some loved him, and some didn’t agree with his style of work, but for the most part he was respected. Frost brought something new and very different to poetry, which will always keep him relevant. Robert Frost’s early life and a critiques of his work, give us an idea of what he and his poems are all about.
Robert Lee Frost was born in San Francisco, California on March 26 of 1974 and died in Boston, Massachusetts on January 29 of 1963. Though he did not truly start publishing poems until age thirty-nine, Frost obtained four Pulitzer prizes in his writing career and was deemed one of the greatest twentieth century poets. His pastoral writing and skilled use of meter and rhythm has captured the attention of reader’s and critics for decades (Academic American, 345). Frost was very fond of nature and the beauty of things around him and illustrated this in many of his poems. A reviewer stated that Frost was “always occupied with the complicated task of simply being sincere” (Faggen, I). This statement describes the writer well in the sense that Frost’s works are very full of emotion. His use of the English language and the fact that he often seemed to be holding a little something back in his writing has made him one of the most celebrated American writers ever.
Both poets, in these works and many others, display a fascination with the death of themselves as well as the death of peers, and loved ones. Both Frost and Dickinson experienced a great deal of death throughout each of their lives. Frost’s greatest loss was the death of his son, which is greatly depicted in his poem “Home Burial.” Dickinson suffered the loss of many friends and family. She spent a lot of her time in her room looking out upon the headstones of these people.
Frost communicates this message through the exploration of themes of death as well as maturity to a lesser degree. When one is old they realise they should have enjoyed their youth, when one is young they do not realise that they are in what should be the glory years of their life. The youth of personification and repetition throughout make the poem memorable and increases the potency of the
The vivid imagery, symbolism, metaphors make his poetry elusive, through these elements Frost is able to give nature its dark side. It is these elements that must be analyzed to discover the hidden dark meaning within Roberts Frost’s poems. Lines that seemed simple at first become more complex after the reader analyzes the poem using elements of poetry. For example, in the poem Mending Wall it appears that Robert frost is talking about two man arguing about a wall but at a closer look the reader realizes that the poem is about the things that separate man from man, which can be viewed as destructive. In After Apple Picking, the darkness of nature is present through the man wanting sleep, which is symbolic of death. It might seem that the poem is about apple picking and hard work but it is actually about the nature of death.