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Robert frost's imagery
Critical analysis of design by robert frost
Critical analysis of design by robert frost
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Robert Frost wrote a poem – twice. The early version of the poem, “In White,” created a simple scene filled with anomalies. For some reason, years later the work beckoned for further attention. The poet complied and skillfully enhanced the work, rendering a finished poem that exceeds the scope of the original. Both versions of the Frost’s poem send a nuanced message to the thoughtful reader. While vague and open to interpretation, that message invites debate, an introspective feast. The poem “Design” demonstrates polished superiority through Frost’s mastery of imagery, amplified by devices, and unburdened language.
Initially, an explication provides an understanding of the internal workings of the finished poem, to identify the differences between the two. Frost’s poem, “Design” begins in a most uncomplicated way: “I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, / On a white heal-all, holding up a moth / Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—” The spider, described as such, denotes jolly innocence, an unlikely association. Introducing the first of several ironies, the heal-all preserves life and yet the connection to death is evident. The flower provides a stage for the spider, menacing in spite of its pale disguise. Frost’s white color scheme persists into the moth simile, poor dead thing. Satin, typically equated with rich finery, finds a meaning much less elegant with the adjective, “rigid.” Each line zooms closer to the scene at hand, no doubt something is just not right. Line four continues the mood with, “Assorted characters of death and blight,” and adds to the feeling of impending doom. Death and blight signify a veering away from the norm. Each represents something untoward. The heal-all flower sits de...
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...iles. As such, the reader derives a deeper understanding of the action, “like lifting a veil.”
In summary, the explication of “Design” served to process both poems by examining one, then identifying and comparing the changes. Such a maneuver provided a clearer perspective of Frost’s initial rendering and subsequent finished work. Thus, exposing their subtle differences resulted in a way to compare the work and draw a subjective conclusion regarding the more effective poem. However, one must remain mindful that without the lesser first “draft,” the second would have had no life. Indeed, an exercise in refinement, the poet revised this piece with a delicate hand, shaping precise images and giving voice to each word, producing a superior message which posed more questions than solid answers about whether life (or death) happens by coincidence, or by “Design.”
The feelings the poets express throughout both poems of how life was taken into a different course. Frost and Robinson, in multiple ways, used the idea of imagery in poetry to respond to the chaos and tensions that emerged within the United States. From my perspective, from within the poems much more was lost than gained.
... Robinson gives you a mental image then blows it to pieces. While Frost, write a long, drawn-out poem which is very detailed but at the same time confusing. His wording causes readers to stumble over sentences. This causes the reader to become frustrated, allowing them to somewhat experience the frustration the couple in “Home Burial” is going through themselves.
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.
Instructor Mendoza English 1B 22 July 2015. Robert Frost: Annotated Bibliography. Research Question: What are the common themes in Robert Frost's work? Robert Frost is a very successful poet from the 20th century, as well as a four time Pulitzer Prize winner.
Robert Frost's Design Robert Frost outlines an ironic and disturbing situation involving a flower, a spider, and a moth in his poem "Design". The poem's text suggests the possibility of an absence of a god, but does no more than simply beg the question, for Frost's speaker does not offer the answer. By examining the events of the poem in the first stanza and the speaker's annotative second stanza, we arrive at the notion that perhaps the world is in disarray, and uncontrolled by a higher being.
Frost’s “Design” challenges the age old question of human existence: why? The sonnet describes a spider consuming a moth, an event one might argue is commonplace in nature. Interestingly enough, however, the feast (or murder – your choice) takes place on a heal-all plant. Taking into consideration the plant’s healing potential, the speaker addresses the nature of the universe; its design. What exactly determines the structure and function of our world and its inhabitants? Through its conflicting imagery and broken rhyme scheme, “Design” explores the possibility of forces acting upon our universe and proposes the idea that perhaps there is no force governing the world.
During the height of Robert Frost’s popularity, he was a well-loved poet who’s natural- and simple-seeming verse drew people - academics, artists, ordinary people both male and female - together into lecture halls and at poetry readings across the country.1 An eloquent, witty, and, above all else, honest public speaker, Frost’s readings imbued his poetry with a charismatic resonance beyond that of the words on paper, and it is of little surprise that people gathered to listen. Yet it remains somewhat ironic that his poetry would possess this power to bring individuals together - poetry that, for the most part, contains a prevailing theme of alienation, of a sense of separation from society, of isolation and aloneness in an uncaring world. Running parallel with this is a second theme concerned with the interaction between the human and the non-human: occasionally the ‘non’ may serve as a comfort for the dispossessed - but more often, the interaction between the two is destructive and disastrous. An analysis of a sample of his works - in this case his second book, North of Boston, as well as a few of his later poems - reveals these recurring themes, and the different interpretations Frost brings to them.
Robert Frost’s “Design” is a poem of finding natural cruelty in the serenity of nature, a melody of understanding. Upon reading the first line, not unlike the whole poem, a joke in tone, rhythm is building up an image that grows into something else. In “Design”, the joking discovery progresses gradually through a sequence of conflicting images. . Frost uses imagery, allegory, and characterization to accomplish what could only be described as an American emblem poem. This essay will analyze Frost’s “Design”, interpreting the underlying message and overall theme Frost may have been trying to convey.
...fall of snow and the unremitting “sweep” of “easy wind” appear tragically indifferent to life, in turn stressing the value of Poirier’s assessment of the poem. Frost uses metaphor in a way that gives meaning to simple actions, perhaps exploring his own insecurities before nature by setting the poem amongst a tempest of “dark” sentiments. Like a metaphor for the workings of the human mind, the pull between the “promises” the traveller should keep and the lure of death remains palpably relevant to modern life. The multitudes of readings opened up through the ambiguity of metaphor allows for a setting of pronounced liminality; between life and death, “night and day, storm and heath, nature and culture, individual and group, freedom and responsibility,” Frost challenges his readers to delve deep into the subtlety of tone and come to a very personal conclusion.
Robert Frost's "Design" is a Petrarchan sonnet that questions God's design of nature and if there truly is a design to life which is illustrated through the use of irony, simile, strong imagery, and a rhetoric question. The sonnet is composed of an octave with the rhyme scheme of ABBAABBA and a sestet with the rhyme scheme of ACAACC. The theme of the poem is written with a sense of admiration for nature, but a skeptic mind for the meaning behind the design of life.
The poem Fire and Ice is nine line long and is an example of a briefly ironic literary style of Frosts work. Fire and Ice ranges between two meter lengths. The poem uses interwoven rhymes founded on “ire,” “ice,” and “ate.” Although the meter is irregular it does keep up an iambic foot throughout the poem. The first line of the poem is a tetrameter followed by a dimeter which is followed by five line of tetrameter, ending with two lines of dimeter. The division of the line lengths is to render natural interruptions in the poem causing the reader to stop and reread what they have just read in order to comprehend the meaning of the lines containing the dimeter. For example when the reader reads “ Some say in ice” they go back to the first line of the poem to reread the topic of what some are saying about the end of the world. The rhyme scheme of “Fire and Ice” is ABAABCBCB style. The words “fire” and “ice” are being rhymed with themselves. By using this scheme it means that the poem falls soundly and flows. By using the rhyme scheme Frosts creates a connection between the words. For example “fire” and “desire,” which make it clear that the words are related on a deeper level. As well the rhyming of “fire” and “ice” with themselves made it work to cre...
Robert Frost is considered by many to be one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Frost’s work has been regarded by many as unique. Frost’s poems mainly take place in nature, and it is through nature that he uses sense appealing-vocabulary to immerse the reader into the poem. In the poem, “Hardwood Groves”, Frost uses a Hardwood Tree that is losing its leaves as a symbol of life’s vicissitudes. “Frost recognizes that before things in life are raised up, they must fall down” (Bloom 22).
Frost’s use of comparisons helps the reader to better interpret the meaning of this poem. The picture created, with his use of imagery allows the reader to view his work from various perspectives. His analogies are very pragmatic. The reader is able to relate to the speaker’s feelings. After reading this poem it gives the reader a sense of understanding why the speaker wished he could go back to his past so much.
Richardson, Mark. The Ordeal of Robert Frost: The Poet and His Poetics. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1997. Print.
Literature is rarely, if ever, merely a story that the author is trying to tell. It is imperative that the reader digs deep within the story to accurately analyze and understand the message the author is trying to portray. Authors tend to hide themselves in their stories. The reader can learn about the author through literary elements such as symbolism, diction, and structure. A good example of this is Robert Frost’s poems The Road Not Taken and Nothing Gold can Stay in which he uses ordinary language unlike many other poets that became more experimental (Frost, Robert. “1.”).