Shahin Damoui
Daniel Yu
Writing 30
10 June 2012
Robert Frost’s Conversational Style and Mock-Heroic Tone My portfolio consists of a collection of both heroic and tragic poems that incorporate the blank verse form. These poems imitate Robert Frost’s mock-heroic dialogue and conversational style. Three of these poems in particular, “The Boxer”, “The Boy In My Dreams,” and “The Interview” draw from Frederick Turner’s “The Neural Lyre” and Maurice Charney’s “Robert Frost’s Conversational Style,” in attempting to emulate a style that is an artfully fabricated imitation of ordinary conversation. My poems, like those of Frost, characterize a tone of amused and ironic detachment. Robert Frost has a unique conversational style that is unlike any
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In “The Boxer,” I attempted to deemphasize the magnitude of the punches the fighter was throwing to illustrate the insignificance of the actual fight itself. I wanted the emphasis to be put on the entirety of the fighter’s career, not merely one fight. In Robert Frost’s “The Death Of A Hired Man,” many of the effects that Turner claims are inherent in metered poetry are illustrated. It has a sharp emphasis on narrative as it tells its dramatic story about the return of Silas, the hired man, to the farm of Mary and Warren. Most of the conversation in the poem is between Mary and her husband Warren. Frost characterizes Mary as a sympathetic character, while Warren is characterized by his skeptical demeanor. Many of the characteristics of metered poetry, according to Frederick Turner, are present in Frost’s “The Death Of A Hired Man.” Turner, in his piece “The Neural Lyre,” states the universal nature of metered poetry. He claims, “all over the world human beings compose and recite poetry in poetic meter; all over the world the meter has line-length of about three-seconds, stretching sometimes to about four and a half for solemn poetry, and contracting sometimes as little as two for comic poetry (Neural Lyre 277).” Metrical verse is characterized as universal, archaic, and magical. This is seen throughout Frost’s “The Death of a Hired Man,” in which the blank verse is supple and moves easily, mimicking the fluidity of the conversational style. Frost incorporates a regular
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
Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, and Rudyard Kipling all have an incredible sense for poetry. “The Road Not Taken”, “Dreams”, and “If-” all have many themes, unique writing styles, and clever uses of rhetorical devices.
A more narrative poem, the life of Trethewey’s father is told through the lens of his boxing. Her father’s history in boxing acts as a glue base to which all of the defining facts about his life stick. By looking at his life through his boxing, Trethewey is able to explain aspects of his life without prosaic writing. The lines, “Perhaps he learned/ just to box a stepfather, then turned/ that anger into a prize at the Halifax gym,” is able to introduce a possibly abusive stepfather by insinuating that the anger he felt towards his stepfather fueled his passion for boxing and led to him becoming skilled. The simple images in “Amateur Fighter” are impactful and clearly tell the story of the fighter. The diction of this poem is not embellished but understated and straight forward. A great example of this is the line, “What’s left is the tiny gold glove/ hanging from his keychain.” The image of a “tiny gold
He thought poetry was an art of association, it inspires readers' imagination with symbolism rather than direct imitation of life, and hold the reader's feelings and arouse them to act with passion. His style throughout the 19th century formed the mainstream of American poetry”(1).
In his article “Fear of Narrative and the Skittery Poem of Our Moment,” Tony Hoagland argues that modern poetry is “oblique,” “fractured,” and “discontinuous”. He believes that poems no longer have systematic structure or development, making them appear random with skittish tendencies. Because of the poems that Hoagland feels are different, he categorizes most new poems to be like the kind he describes in his article. He further evaluates new poetry by claiming that “narrative poetry is tainted by overuse” and that the time we live in is “simply not a narrative age.” He uses several poems to support his argument such as, “Couples” by Mark Halliday and “First Person Fabulous” by Matthea Harvey. He utilizes these poems because they possess no true focal point and the structure restricts them from having a clear narrative.
The criterion used to determine whether or not artistic works can be considered poetry or not are, at best, esoteric. As poetry has evolved from rigidly-structured sonnets of the Renaissance to the plethora of imaginative, free verse pieces being produced today, the scope of what the artistic public defines as “poetry” has been stretched to encompass a great many things. This new freedom of form does have its limits, however. Take, for example, Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric and Kenneth Goldsmith’s Seven American Deaths and Disasters. Rankine incorporates a number of images and collages into Citizen to help augment the messages being put forward by her writing, while Goldsmith’s work is composed entirely of transcriptions of
By adding conversational wit to his poetry, Collins is able to transform a serious notion into a completely divergent context. Collins’ personal temperament can be attributed to his writing style in that he is “quick to add a touch of humor to whatever he has to say, however serious the topic, but
The existence of poetry as an artform predates literacy itself. Over the course of history, poetry grew from a verbal form of art, existing mainly in religious hymns, to becoming the universal “language of the heart”. The work of William Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe, some of the most notable poets of history, has resonated with generations of Americans. Although they lived in a Pre-industrial world, their work remains powerful because the themes expressed in their artwork can still be applied to modern society. On the contrary, protruding among this group of ancient poets is Robert Frost, whose modern work remains just as powerful, shaping generations through his questions of existence, and depiction of loneliness in an indifferent universe. One of Frost's most celebrated poems: The Road Not Taken, is influential not only in the literary world, but also within American culture. The poems subsequent ripple through American life is analyzed by David Orr In his essay The Most Misread Poem in America. Here, Orr argues that the misread of The Road Not Taken magnifies the underlying issues in society’s understanding of both Frost and poetry as a whole.
Poetry is used to express several different mediums through: structure, tone, imagery and rhyme schemes. John Keats’s ode “To Autumn” and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” or, a Vision in a Dream” will be critically analyzed, compared and contrasted to each throughout this paper to further dissected the meaning of each poem.
In today’s modern view, poetry has become more than just paragraphs that rhyme at the end of each sentence. If the reader has an open mind and the ability to read in between the lines, they discover more than they have bargained for. Some poems might have stories of suffering or abuse, while others contain happy times and great joy. Regardless of what the poems contains, all poems display an expression. That very moment when the writer begins his mental journey with that pen and paper is where all feelings are let out. As poetry is continues to be written, the reader begins to see patterns within each poem. On the other hand, poems have nothing at all in common with one another. A good example of this is in two poems by a famous writer by
For as long as it can be remembered people have used multiple forms of literature in order to gain knowledge, entertain, and even express a certain idea. Poetry is in fact one of those forms of literature, and before people began to write it, it was known to be told verbally by many. A person would tell a tale and those who listened would memorize it, what eventually caused poetry to spread around. Still to this day, many come to fall in love with the magic poetry possesses. It is the writer’s decision to either have a specific rhythm to it or just have a simple list of words. This essay argues that poetry is a creative way of expressing one's emotions and that it should be, not only preserved, but celebrated, even by those who have not considered themselves poetry fans in the past.
century. Most Americans recognize his name, the titles of and lines from his best-known poems, and even his face. Given his immense popularity, it is a remarkable testimony to the extent of his achievement that he is also considered to be one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, of modern American poets. "…the life and work of America's premier poet- the only truly national poet America has yet produced"(Parini23). His influence is still being felt in American life today. His success in America as well as in England has guaranteed the preservation of his legacy for generations to come. "…Frost gradually evolved from poet to cultural icon,
Robert Frost’s poetic techniques serve as his own “momentary stay against confusion,” or as a buffer against mortality and meaninglessness in several different ways; in the next few examples, I intend to prove this. Firstly, however, a little information about Robert Frost and his works must be provided in order to understand some references and information given.
Everyone has morals in life. Weather learned from nature, family, or past experiences. Robert Frost is well known for using different themes to teach morals in his poems. He uses imagery, emotions, different views, symbolism, and ever nature, to help create an image in one’s mind. The morals that these different types of themes create will make the reader face decisions and consequences as if they were in the poem themselves. His morals can be found in the poems, “The Road Not Taken,” “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” “Out, Out,” and “Acquainted with the Night.” Robert Frost’s poetry uses different themes to create morals which readers will use in daily life. “He is fairly taciturn about what happens to us after death, partly because he finds so
“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”.