Robert Frost was perhaps one of the most popular and beloved of twentieth century American poets. In many ways his work is related to nature and his New England surroundings. To Frost, Nature is a source of wisdom as well as a source of joy. He was born in San Fransisco, and moved to massachusetts at age 11. He later attended Dartmouth, and Harvard, both of which he dropped out of. Once he married, he lived on a thirty-acre farm with orchards, fields, pastured, woodlands, and springs. Farming always produced enough food for his family but they never had enough money.
Robert lived here for around twelve years. At age 39 he moved to England where he published a collection of his poems for the first time. THese poemswere essentially based on his surroundings. He had written these poems in rural isolation on his farm in Massachusetts, and until published, were only read by his wife. For frost, nature is the source of all values. Nearly every poem he wrote is filled with a sense of nature’s reality: her beauty, her threat, and the meaning she has to man. You can almost definitely find a refrence to nature in anyone of Frost’s poems.
Frost did it all, poems about snowy evenings, beautiful springs days, and even the relationship between a tree and a man in his poem, Tree at My Window. Robert Frost had decided on a life of poetry early in his life. His mother had introduced him to it at a young age and he had loved it ever since. Poetry was his passion. Although his ambitions were strong, he did not recieve fame or an adequate amount of criticism after his first book was published. It took Frost longer to be recognized for his poetry than it did for him to publish a book.
Frost was popular among readers but not with critics. In many of his poems, Frost used the poetic device of personification. This is a technique of humanizing inanimate objects. Personification gave Frost the ability to be more free with what he wrote. It made his poetry more effective and more enjoyable to read. Another technique Frost used was the dramatic technique of dialouge. This also improves the effectiveness of his poems, since people come to life when they speak their own words. When reading his poems the yankee phraseology makes us feel like we are in the heart of New England.
Nature figures into everything that Robert Froat wrote. In one of his most popular poems after Apple-Picking, Frost wrote of a farmers view of the afterlife. His simple idea states that this old farmer’s heaven will be a dream of the activities which made up his life. Although his poetry was filled with disciplined and refined language, made to serve the poetic purpose, he never failed to write simply. In conclusion, Frost like many other poets used traditional forms, and spoke in Yankee idiom, but there was so much more to him.
While working in rural seclusion, Frost succeeded in simplifying his language and keeping to his form. His work constrasted with many othe major American poets during his time. Therefore he was often ignored by many. it was only until a few years ago that the world started to realize what talent he had possessed. He is known for his many themes; dark woods and snow, storms and stars, the barriers between man and man as well as his moments of comedy, satire, and rural peace. These have all earned him his place, as one of the greatest American poets of all time.
