Fire And Ice, Billy Collins, And Maya Angelou

Poetry as a literally work in which the expression of ideas and feelings is given strength has had great authors overtime who took different perspectives in this genre of literature. These poets used distinctive rhythm and style to express their styles, poetic themes, outlook on life, and had their share of influence on the American society. This paper uses the basis of these styles, themes, outlook on life and subsequent influence on the American society to compare three prolific poets who ventured into this literature genre: Robert Frost, Mary Oliver, and Maya Angelou. Robert Frost (1874-1963) holds a unique and almost sole position in the career span which mostly encompasses

This poem is typical of the poet’s style because Frost writes a lot about human nature and compares people to nature itself. He judges people and society as a whole. He also uses a lot of literary devices in his poems like metaphors. Frost describes nature in beautiful ways in his poems and “Fire and Ice” is just like the rest of them. It isn’t a departure of common themes.

Love is a feeling of strong or constant affection for a person (Dictionary 1). Love is what is known as the “universal language”. There are so many ways love can be interpreted. The central message that the comfort humans receive, and the shyness they feel for an individual are compartments of love that may not always be touched on in poetry.

To analyze the poem better I took each word as if it symbolized a certain characteristic. In lines three and four, "From what I've tasted of desire I hold those who favor fire" it led me to believe that Frost was trying to use desire as a metaphor to fire. Desire, can usually be used a negative or a positive manner depending on the context it's use. In the poem I think that Frost is using it in a negative sense, because he is uses words like end, perish, and destruction in the poem. Negatively the word desire can mean the drive to win or receive something at any cost, the urge for power, which is very destructive. In lines six and nine "I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction ice is also great and would suffice". Saying that ice is a metaphor to hate. The word hate is worldly known to have a negative condensation. Hate is also

Finally, these three poems all contain one common tone, bitterness. Wallace Stevens shows his bitterness towards the people on earth, in his poem, "Gubbinal." He blames the people for corrupting the world. He says it is ugly in line four. He even goes so far as to compare the sun, which is beautiful and perfect, to the world. The sun is beautiful because it has no humans to destroy it. Wallace Stevens emphasizes his feeling about the world, when he repeats, "The world is ugly,/And the people are sad," at the end of the poem. This shows that he strongly believes the world is corrupt and the people are evil. In the poem, "Fire and Ice," Robert Frost also shows his bitterness towards the people in the world. He feels either our desires or our hate will

People have different outlooks on life; some are positive and others are negative. In the poems “The Rose That Grew From Concrete” by Tupac Shakur and “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost, both sides are shown to the reader. In “ The Rose That Grew From Concrete” Tupac writes about a rose that grew in concrete when nobody believed it could, and this shows that people should always believe in themselves and not to listen to the people saying they can't do something. In the poem “Fire and Ice” Frost says that the world is going to end because of all the hate. These poems can be compared and contrasted because they show some similar themes, as well as they both talk about hate, humanity, and have differences in the mood in which the poem is written.

The poems “First Snow” by Mary Oliver and “After Apple-Picking” by Robert Frost use wildly different poetic forms to achieve much the same practical goal: to describe and represent the first snow of winter. In comparing these two works one is reminded of the universality of experience that makes poetry possible. In contrasting the two one is reminded of the unique creativity and range of expression that makes poetry precious. A synthesis of the two is a solid statement on the power of good poets.

Although this poem also is connected with nature, the theme is more universal in that it could be related to Armageddon, or the end of the world. Even though this theme may seem simple, it is really complex because we do not know how Frost could possibly

What is it about a person walking alone in the woods that can be so meaningful and powerful? Weather its fifteen lines or five pages the reader can gain many different observations and mindsets to overcome obstacles this life throws at you. Eudora Welty and Robert Frost display this in their own unique ways wile portraying meaning in some similar and some very different ways, when writing Welty’s “A Worn Path” and Frost’s “Stopping by woods on a snowy evening”. Anyone can tell you that different authors will approach similar plots in different ways, and that there are multiple lessons to learn from any story or poem. To say that themes and lessons overlap from story to story would be obvious as well. However, the strategies and techniques these authors use to approach the meaning of their passage, is what makes these two authors unique. Robert Frost takes a simple and straight forward approach with a poem that reaches out to anyone loosing motivation, and begins to guide them in the right direction. Where Eudora Welty tends to take the more sophisticated approach and go more in depth with the story, motivating different people in different ways. Both of these passages use the walk through the woods as a metaphor of life and the speakers are reminders on how to go about it.

Poems are like snowflakes. While no two are the same, they all have common structures and themes. One prevalent theme in poetry is that of death, which is present in both “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. Dickinson perceives death as a gentleman, while Frost perceives death as loneliness, which provides insight on how the time periods of the poems, the genders of the authors, and the authors’ personal experiences influence literature.

Poetry is a literary medium which often resonates with the responder on a personal level, through the subject matter of the poem, and the techniques used to portray this. Robert Frost utilises many techniques to convey his respect for nature, which consequently makes much of his poetry relevant to the everyday person. The poems “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ and “The mending wall” strongly illuminate Frost’s reverence to nature and deal with such matter that allows Frost to speak to ordinary people.

In “The Story of an Hour” and the poem “Still I Rise” Kate Chopin and Maya Angelou have explored the theme of oppression in a variety of different ways. “The Story of an Hour” is a short story based around how dramatically things can change within the space of an hour and how this can affect your life in the short period of time. Within the hour Mr Mallard is presumed dead in a railroad disaster, resulting in Mrs Mallard short lived ‘freedom’ after years of being oppressed, before soon learning that her husband is not dead as she encounters him. This shock triggers an ongoing heart problem and Mrs Mallard is soon confirmed dead. “Still I Rise” is a poem based around Maya Angelou and how she will overcome challenges that are thrown at her.

“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. These deeper layers of complexity can be clearly seen in his poems “ The Road Not Taken”, “Fire and Ice”, and “Birches”.

     A very interesting point regarding Frost’s relationship with nature is that he views it with ambiguity. Most assume that Frost is a nature lover; however, while this is true in part, Frost also views nature as having the capability of being destructive. Lynen speaks of this duality by saying, “You cannot have one without the other: love of natural beauty and horror at the remoteness and indifference of the physical world are not opposites but different aspects of the same view” (7). On speaking of Frost’s dualistic view of nature, Phillip L. Gerber states, “For nature is hard as she is soft, she can destroy and thwart, disappoint, frustrate, and batter” (132). Robert Frost views nature as an ‘alien force capable of destroying man’, but on the flip side, he also views “man’s struggle with nature as a heroic battle” (quoted in Thompson).

The great debate of whether the world will end in a fiery ball of destruction or a frozen wasteland has baffled the minds of many people. A man named Robert Frost has written a poem called "Fire and Ice" that describes his thoughts on how he would prefer to leave this world. Upon reading this poem, the reader can derive two distinct meanings of fire and ice; one being of actual fire and ice destroying the world, and the other having symbols for the fire and ice, such as fire being desire or passion and ice being hatred and deceit. Although this poem is one of his shortest poems with only nine lines, it is also one of the most famous works that he has ever created.