Robert Frost Reconsidering Perspectives

Discoveries often demand the re-evaluation of an individual’s outlook on life, a process in which reconsidering perspectives allows one to make sense of the world and come to terms with confronting realities. Two composers who’s work reflect this notion are Robert Frosts poems ‘Mending Wall’ and ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’, and Lyndall Hough’s short story ‘The Shooting Kid’. Each text explores the varied emotionally and intellectually significant discoveries on individuals and their ability to allow for reconsideration of personal perspectives and understand their place in the world.

Can a cow be anything more than a cow, or a wall actually be something other than a wall? Robert Frost, who lived from 1874 to 1963 and was considered one of America’s most eminent poets, demonstrated metaphors frequently within his poems. Readers of Frost’s poetry are often faced with the question, “What is Robert Frost really trying to say?” It is without a shadow of doubt that the American poet had the capability of taking his poetry and turning it into something preternatural, but not without the help of metaphors. Frost elaborated the meaning of metaphor as, “Saying one thing and meaning another, saying one thing in terms of another….” Several pieces of his work provides images such as a cow, a flower, country roads, and a wall that serve as metaphors for larger ideas.

A first look at The Road Not Taken shows the narrator’s cheery story of going against the flow of society and deciding to take the path that the narrator wants. Despite the pessimistic outlook on life, Frost’s poems emit life’s reality. Robert Frost’s outlook on life is truthful and not a fantasy.

Most of Frost’s success in American literature came from his capability to speak in poetic but plain language to common people and scholars. His poetry is the culmination, combining all elements of poetic craft and modern themes. What separates him from most poets is instead of writing about his own experiences, Frost wrote about the process of discovery and the relationship between people and their surroundings. Because Frost’s poems operate on so many levels, it is possible for almost everyone to find his or her own beliefs about life reflected in Frost’s poetry. Furthermore, the

      Poets use imagery to convey meaning, feelings, and emotions. The contemporary poet best know for his use of imagery is Robert Frost. The Road Not Taken, opened the eyes of poetic readers and critics to Frost’s artistic creations. He uses forms of language such as diction and syntax to capture and move the reader.

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.

During his life, Robert Frost, the icon of American literature, wrote many poems that limned the picturesque American landscape. His mostly explicated poems “Birches” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” reflect his young manhood in the rural New England. Both of these poems are seemingly straightforward but in reality, they deal with a higher level of complexity and philosophy. Despite the difference in style and message, “Birches” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” are loaded with vivid imagery and symbolism that metaphorically depict the return to nature and childhood, the struggle between reality and imagination and also life and death.

In many writer's and poet’s creations , there is a debate of does their work have an affinity for either the light and benevolence element, or the dark and macabre aspect. Robert Frost is a poet that ignites numerous debates and arguments on this subject. A point that should be pointed out is why does Frost’s work spark these debates, and the answer is because of conflict and duality. Robert Frost’s work does not venture into one world, and lives out the rest of poem’s life . His work conflicts with itself in many conflicting and opposite aspects. Frost’s work are a world of duality consisting of light vs dark, life vs death, and truth vs fiction.

Poetry is essentially the gateway to human emotion through the expression of words. From the 16th to 20th century, poets like William Shakespeare, John Keats and Robert Frost expressed emotions similar to poets of today. In these different time periods, each poet masterfully crafted timeless pieces applying a variety of syntactic devices to create expressive poems. In the 16th century, Shakespeare used quatrains and couplets to write his sonnets. Some hundred years later, John Keats was a prominent figure in Romanticism, a poetic style known for expressing emotional passion in the 19th century. More recently, in the 20th century, Robert Frost wrote metaphysical poems that held an underlying meaning within them. These three poets expressed emotions in their poems through specific forms of sentence structure and word arrangement. The syntax in the poems, “Acquainted With the Night” by Robert Frost, “Sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare, and “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” by John Keats reveals the author's personal experiences with loneliness, love and admiration for other people.

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

For an active individual like myself, this poem forces me to reminisce of the sunny days that my family and I would take walks in local parks. When we came upon an intersection, my brother and I would always argue until one of our parents stepped in and made an executive decision. These conflicts show similarity to the poet’s; however, our dispute involved multiple individuals while his conflict was a personal one. Furthermore, I could relate to the adventurous decision that the traveler made. Selecting the dangerous path is never easy and simple, but advancements in science and life happen when we explore outside our boundaries. Even though my belief of achieving gains by navigating past difficulties might not be the important reason for Frost’s choice, it probably still played a significant role in the final

wisdom Do you think that is true of the poems of Frost and the other

Robert Frost successfully taken reader's imagination on a journey through the wintertime with his poems "Desert Places" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." Frost's New England background in these two poems reflect the beautiful scenery that is present in our part of the country. Even though these poems both have winter settings they contain completely different tones. One poem has a feeling of a depressing loneliness, and the other of feeling welcome. The poems show how the same setting can have totally different impacts on an individual depending on their mind set at the moment. These poems are both made up of simple stanzas and diction, but they are not simple poems, and could be easily misunderstood. In the

“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”.

Robert Lee Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874 and died in Boston on January 29, 1963. Frost was considered to be one of America’s leading 20th century poets and a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He was an essentially pastoral poet who was often associated with rural New England. Frost wrote poems of a philosophical region. His poems were traditional but he often said as a dig at his archrival Carl Sandburg, that “he would soon play tennis without a net as write free verse.” Frost said this because he believed he was a pioneer of rhythm and meter and in the poetic use of vocabulary and inflections of everyday life and speech. Frost’s poetry is considered to be traditional, experimental, regional, and universal