Robert Frost

## Biography

Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, where his father, William Prescott Frost Jr., and his mother, Isabelle Moodie, had moved from Pennsylvania shortly after marrying. After the death of his father from tuberculosis when Frost was eleven years old, he moved with his mother and sister, Jeanie, who was two years younger, to Lawrence, Massachusetts. He became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, enrolled at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1892, and later at Harvard University in Boston, though he never earned a formal college degree.

Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first published poem, "My Butterfly," appeared on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent.

In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, whom he'd shared valedictorian honors with in high school and who was a major inspiration for his poetry until her death in 1938. **The couple moved to England in 1912,** after they tried and failed at farming in New Hampshire. It was abroad that **Frost met and was influenced by such contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. While in England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped to promote and publish his work.**

**By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length collections,** A Boy's Will (Henry Holt and Company, 1913) and North of Boston (Henry Holt and Company, 1914), **and his reputation was established.** B**y the 1920s, he was the most celebrated poet in America, a**nd with each new book—including New Hampshire (Henry Holt and Company, 1923), A Further Range (Henry Holt and Company, 1936), Steeple Bush (Henry Holt and Company, 1947), and In the Clearing (Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1962)—his fame and honors, including four Pulitzer Prizes, increased. Frost served as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress from 1958 to 1959. In 1962, he was presented the Congressional Gold Medal.  Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England—and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time—Frost is anything but merely a regional poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony.

In a 1970 review of The Poetry of Robert Frost, the poet Daniel Hoffman describes Frost's early work as **"the Puritan ethic turned astonishingly lyrical and enabled to say out loud the sources of its own delight in the world,**" and comments on Frost's career as the "American Bard": "He became a national celebrity, our nearly official poet laureate, and a great performer in the tradition of that earlier master of the literary vernacular, Mark Twain." **President John F. Kennedy, at whose inauguration Frost delivered a poem, said of the poet, "He has bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding."** And famously, "He saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.” Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in Boston on January 29, 1963.

**Literary Style**

He wrote of traditional farm life, appealing to a nostalgia for the old ways. His subjects are universal — apple picking, stone walls, fences, country roads. Frost’s approach was lucid and accessible: He rarely employed pedantic allusions or ellipses. His frequent use of rhyme also appealed to the general audience. Frost’s work is often deceptively simple. Many poems suggest a deeper meaning.

Robert Frost was a well-known American modernist poet. Like other modernist poets, he wrote his poems in ways that were new and different when he was writing, at the beginning of the 20th century. But unlike other modernists, Frost also kept some of the traditional aspects of poetry. You might say he was caught between two movements: the traditional movement and the modernist movement in poetry. Modernist poetry is different from traditional poetry in several ways: it uses simplified language and often abandons traditional rhyme and meter. In addition, the modernist poets moved away from using images of nature, and they viewed the world with a more pessimistic lens. Finally, the modernists often left their poems vague and open to interpretation by the reader. Robert Frost wrote in new ways, but still kept some traditional characteristics.

As a poet, Robert Frost was greatly influenced by the emotions and events of everyday life. Within a seemingly banal event from a normal day—watching the ice weigh down the branches of a birch tree, mending the stones of a wall, mowing a field of hay—Frost discerned a deeper meaning, a metaphysical expression of a larger theme such as love, hate, or conflict.

Frost is perhaps most famous for being a pastoral poet in terms of the subject of everyday life. Many of his most famous poems such as “Mending Wall” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” are inspired by the natural world, particularly his time spent as a poultry farmer in New Hampshire. Ironically, until his adulthood in New England, Frost was primarily a “city boy” who spent nearly all of his time in an urban environment. It is possibly because of his late introduction to the rural side of New England that Frost became so intrigued by the natural world.

## Historical & Cultural Context

World War I (1914-1918)

World War II (1939-1945)

The Great Depression (1930s)

The Cold War (1945-1990)

- **Regional Poetry:** connection with rural life, landscape, woods, etc.

**Though Frost allied himself with no literary school or movement, the imagists helped at the start to promote his American reputation. In a sens, Frost stands at the crossroads of 19th century American modernist poetry.**

## Works

### The Road Not Taken (1916)

1. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

2. And sorry I could not travel both

3. And be one traveler, long I stood

4. And looked down one as far as I could

5. To where it bent in the undergrowth;

6. Then took the other, as just as fair,

7. And having perhaps the better claim,

8. Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

9. Though as for that the passing there

10. Had worn them really about the same,

11. And both that morning equally lay

12. In leaves no step had trodden black.

13. Oh, I kept the first for another day!

14. Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

15. I doubted if I should ever come back.

16. I shall be telling this with a sigh

17. Somewhere ages and ages hence:

18. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

19. I took the one less traveled by,

20. And that has made all the difference.

Written in 1915 in England, "The Road Not Taken" is one of Robert Frost's—and the world's—most well-known poems. Although commonly interpreted as a celebration of rugged individualism, the poem actually contains multiple different meanings. The speaker in the poem, faced with a choice between two roads, takes the road "less traveled," a decision which he or she supposes "made all the difference." However, Frost creates enough subtle ambiguity in the poem that it's unclear whether the speaker's judgment should be taken at face value, and therefore, whether the poem is about the speaker making a simple but impactful choice, or about how the speaker *interprets* a choice whose impact is unclear.

### Form

“The Road Not Taken” consists of four stanzas of five lines. The rhyme scheme is ABAAB; the rhymes are strict and masculine, with the notable exception of the last line (we do not usually stress the *-ence* of *difference*). There are four stressed syllables per line, varying on an iambic tetrameter base.

### THEMES

**Choices:** In "The Road Not Taken," the speaker describes him or herself as facing a choice between which of two roads to take. The speaker's choice functions as an extended metaphor for all the choices that the speaker—and all people—must make in life. Through the speaker's experience, the poem explores the nature of choices, and what it means to be a person forced to choose (as all people inevitably are).

**Individualism**: In "The Road Not Taken," the speaker is faced with a choice between two roads and elects to travel by the one that appears to be slightly less worn. The diverging roads may be read as being an extended metaphor for two kinds of life choices in general: the conventional versus the unconventional. By choosing the less-traveled path over the well-traveled path, the speaker suggests that he or she values individualism over conformity.

**The entirety of "The Road Not Taken" is an extended metaphor .**

SYMBOLS

* Road: The road symbolizes journey of life.
* Diversion: The image of the road splitting into two paths symbolizes a choice in life of an individual.
* Yellow Woods: Yellow woods symbolize the idea of change.
* Leaves: Leaves symbolize clues for the better choice.
* Undergrowth: Undergrowth stands for the undiscovered regions of the future.
* Ages and ages: Ages and ages refers to assumption of future when present will have become far past.
* Difference: Difference symbolizes the choices that are made by very few people.

**Metaphor**: Robert Frost used several metaphors in The Road Not Taken. Title of the poem itself has metaphorical meaning. The word ‘road’ is used as a metaphor for the choice we make for different opportunities. The phrase “yellow woods” is also a metaphor that implies the idea of change in difficult situation as tree change their leaves. In the last stanza of the poem, the writer uses a metaphor “less traveled road” that means the choices less preferred by humans.

**Simile**: Robert Frost used simile in second stanza, “as just as fair”. Here the poet compares road to an easy way through life.

**Personification**: In The Road Not take, the poet personifies road and attribute it with a human quality. In second stanza, poet stated, “Because it was grassy and wanted wear”. The use of wanted wear is a beautiful personification.

### Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923)

1. Whose woods these are I think I know.

2. His house is in the village though;

3. He will not see me stopping here

4. To watch his woods fill up with snow.

5. My little horse must think it queer

6. To stop without a farmhouse near

7. Between the woods and frozen lake

8. The darkest evening of the year.

9. He gives his harness bells a shake

10. To ask if there is some mistake.

11. The only other sound’s the sweep

12. Of easy wind and downy flake.

13. The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

14. But I have promises to keep,

15. And miles to go before I sleep,

16. And miles to go before I sleep.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"t in **1922 and published in 1923, as part of Frost´s collection *New Hampshire***. The poem is told from the perspective of a traveler who stops to watch the snow fall in the forest, and in doing so reflects on both nature and society. Frost claimed to have written the poem in one sitting.

**FORM**

The poem consists of four quatrains , four-lined stanza, that have the following rhyme scheme: AABA, BBCB, CCDC. The peom is written in iambic tetrameter.

**TONE:** Peaceful, melancholic, reflective.

**THEMES**

**The Acceptance of death**: in the poem death is represented by the woods. The speaker describes them as lovely, dark, deep, in a calm and silent night. This shows how the speaker welcomes death as a sth inevitablethat must be accepted. However, he knows that he has ore things to so, more years and experiences to live before passing to the enternal life.

**The Beauty in Nature**: this poem presents nature as a standard of beauty that is so strong that it captiures the soeaker´s attention and makes him or her halt whatever they are doing. There are not many descriptive words used to convey what it is that the speaker finds so beautiful, only lovely, dark, and deep. The beauty of this scene is, of course, not registered by the horse, whom the poem shows to be impatient.

SYMBOLS

**Woods**: They represent one side of the two choices that the speaker has before them. They could head towards the woods or they could return to their mundane obligations. Th**e woods represent a freedom of sorts, liberated from the constraints of society,** and without the endless tasks, everyday life demands on the average person. There, one could live within the natural world and enjoy the peace nature has to offer. But, it should be noted, the woods are also “dark and deep.” They also represent darkness and present the speaker with the option of “sleep,” or as some have interpreted it, death.

* **Metaphor:** "And miles to go before I go to sleep" These miles are the years he wants to live before "going to sleep, that is to say, dying. (15-16)
* Personification: "horse must think" (5)
* Refrain : (15-16)
* Imagery: (8, 11- 12-13)
* Alliteration : (4,11,13)
* Enjan¡mbment: (3-4, 9-10, 11-12)

## Intro Paragraph

The beginning of the twentieth century in Europe witnessed the outbreak of one of the most horrifying events in the history of humanity: the outbreak of the First World War. In America, which had been a participant yet not territory of warfare, the years that followed the catastrophic event were characterized by surge of economic growth, cultural uproar, and a sense of revolution and freedom that ended abruptly with the Great Depression. As all these turning events were taking place, many writers decided to reflect their reality into their writings. This was the case of the outstanding American poet and journalist Robert Frost. Object of multiple awards, Frost’s poetry was simple in language yet deep in meaning, structured and filled with instances of imagery that painted a clear picture for the readers. He adhered to regional literature, choosing to depict the customs and characteristics of the rural New England where he was born. His pieces often explored universal yet transcendental themes that appealed to wide audience, such as the questioning of traditions and the decisions individuals have to make in life.

Characteristics period:

-Uncertainty brought both by the war and the following depression

-Frost’s poems were influenced by his own perception of reality, which seemed to be quite ambiguous

Characteristics Frost:

-Depicted rural life in England (was somewhat a regionalist)

-Use of American colloquial speech

-Realistic depictions

-Focused on decision-making moments

-Won four Pulitzers

-Believed in following rules for poetry

### MLA citation

Frost, Robert. "The Road Not Taken." 1916. *Robert Frost -poems-*, Poem Hunter, 2004, pp. 107.

Frost, Robert. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." 1923. *Robert Frost -poems-*, Poem Hunter, 2004, pp. 86.