UNIT 26 ROBERT FROST (1874-1963)
Structure
26.0 Objectives
26.1 Life and Works of Robert Frost .
26.2 "Mending Wall"
26.2.1 "Mending Wall" Text of Poem
26.2.2 "Mending Wall" Critical Appreciation '
26.2.3 "Mending Wall" Notes
26.3 "Birches"
26.3.1 "Birches" Text of Poem
26.3.2 "Birches" Critical Appreciation
26.3.3 "Birches" Notes
26.4 Let Us Sum Up
26.5 Questions
26.6 Further Reading
26.0 OBJECTIVES
In this unit we study the life and works of Robert Frost. We also look in detail at two
of his poems, "Mending Wall" and "Birches" and see how Frost developed his own
unique, spare and clean style in which there was a close link with nature and where
ordinary natural objects often suggest something far greater.
26.1 LIFE AND WORKS OF ROBERT ~~'ROST
Robert Frost was born in California where his father, a journalist with political
aspirations and a dissatisfied northeastemer, had moved. He was an occasionally
violent man and developed in Frost a lifelong wariness towards destructive impulses.
His mother was Scottish and wrote poetry. Through her Frost became acquainted
with the Romantic poets as well as New England poets like Emerson. She also
introduced him to organised Christian religion.
Frost's father died in 1885, the family returned to New England, and Frost finished
high school from Lawrence, Massachusetts, (studying classics) as the class
valedictorian. Three years later he manied his classmate and fellow valedictorian,
Eleanor White. Frost studied for a short time at Dartmouth College, taught in
schools, and then enrolled as aspecial student at Harvard (1~ 9 7 ~ ~ 1 8where
9 9 ) he was
influenced by William James and George Santayana. He took courses in English,
philosophy and the classics. From Harvard he enteredeacompletely different world.
His grandfather had left him a farm in New Hampshire and Frost, his wife and his
four children endured years'of hardship there. While he was struggling with
depression and thoughts of suicide Frost was also composing poetry and establishing
a close link with nature. In the years 1906-7 he wrote many of the poems that would
later appear in North of Boston and Mountain Interval (1916). In 1909 Frost left the
farm to teach in New Hampshire. From there he sold his farm and noved to England
in 1912 because he was unable to find publishers for his work in the land of his birth.
Within a month of his arrival in England he was able to publish his poems and North
of Boston won praise from Ezra Pound. Within two years his volumes had appeared
in America andhe won a number of honours, including election to the National
Institute of Arts and Letters.
, American Poetry
-- - -
Frost returned to New England in 1915 and started teaching in Amherst College two
years later. He was obviously making a commitment to a tradition and a particular
location. Kipling had already pointed out that Frost's language sounded strange to
English readers; Frost regarded this as an advantage--he felt his language had the
"freshness of a stranger," and that strangeness, be it in lhiiguage or metaphor, is
intrinsic to poetry. Critics suggest that Frost's poetry sounds unfamiliar even to those
Americans outside new England and of course we in India would feel no differently.
There were a number of sources,frbm'whichFrost inherited the technique of using
the ordinary to suggest something other than itself: the Bible, the classics, the poetry
of Wordsworth, and New England writers such as Thoreau or Emerson. He admired
Emerson's use of simplicity to suggest profound meanings. The classical pastoral
tradition and the Romantic tradition of poetry about nature were in his hands
refashioned by the use of New England vocabulary and turns of phrase. Rather than
the fine arts or music that influenced a poet like Wallace Stevens Frost was more
drawn to science and philosophy. He was not as radical an experimenter as Ezra
Pound. He felt poets ought to develop links between sound and sense and emotion.
Metre was important too, but its rigidity should be qualified by the rhythms of actual
speech. (He.was a master in the use of a number of verse forms, however, rhymed
couplets, the sonnet, blank verse and rhyming quatrains.) Drama, also, was vital for
it made writing "unboring," but poetry should contain no excesses--the effect should
be a carefully controlled one. He called the poem in its Seauty and its slow, dignified
exploration of reality, "a momentary stay against confusion" (Selected Prose 36.
Norton 1102). A poem is an affirmative entity for it springs from belief, be it belief
in God, in the poet's own self, in art or in the nation.
Structure
26.0 Objectives
26.1 Life and Works of Robert Frost .
26.2 "Mending Wall"
26.2.1 "Mending Wall" Text of Poem
26.2.2 "Mending Wall" Critical Appreciation '
26.2.3 "Mending Wall" Notes
26.3 "Birches"
26.3.1 "Birches" Text of Poem
26.3.2 "Birches" Critical Appreciation
26.3.3 "Birches" Notes
26.4 Let Us Sum Up
26.5 Questions
26.6 Further Reading
26.0 OBJECTIVES
In this unit we study the life and works of Robert Frost. We also look in detail at two
of his poems, "Mending Wall" and "Birches" and see how Frost developed his own
unique, spare and clean style in which there was a close link with nature and where
ordinary natural objects often suggest something far greater.
26.1 LIFE AND WORKS OF ROBERT ~~'ROST
Robert Frost was born in California where his father, a journalist with political
aspirations and a dissatisfied northeastemer, had moved. He was an occasionally
violent man and developed in Frost a lifelong wariness towards destructive impulses.
His mother was Scottish and wrote poetry. Through her Frost became acquainted
with the Romantic poets as well as New England poets like Emerson. She also
introduced him to organised Christian religion.
Frost's father died in 1885, the family returned to New England, and Frost finished
high school from Lawrence, Massachusetts, (studying classics) as the class
valedictorian. Three years later he manied his classmate and fellow valedictorian,
Eleanor White. Frost studied for a short time at Dartmouth College, taught in
schools, and then enrolled as aspecial student at Harvard (1~ 9 7 ~ ~ 1 8where
9 9 ) he was
influenced by William James and George Santayana. He took courses in English,
philosophy and the classics. From Harvard he enteredeacompletely different world.
His grandfather had left him a farm in New Hampshire and Frost, his wife and his
four children endured years'of hardship there. While he was struggling with
depression and thoughts of suicide Frost was also composing poetry and establishing
a close link with nature. In the years 1906-7 he wrote many of the poems that would
later appear in North of Boston and Mountain Interval (1916). In 1909 Frost left the
farm to teach in New Hampshire. From there he sold his farm and noved to England
in 1912 because he was unable to find publishers for his work in the land of his birth.
Within a month of his arrival in England he was able to publish his poems and North
of Boston won praise from Ezra Pound. Within two years his volumes had appeared
in America andhe won a number of honours, including election to the National
Institute of Arts and Letters.
, American Poetry
-- - -
Frost returned to New England in 1915 and started teaching in Amherst College two
years later. He was obviously making a commitment to a tradition and a particular
location. Kipling had already pointed out that Frost's language sounded strange to
English readers; Frost regarded this as an advantage--he felt his language had the
"freshness of a stranger," and that strangeness, be it in lhiiguage or metaphor, is
intrinsic to poetry. Critics suggest that Frost's poetry sounds unfamiliar even to those
Americans outside new England and of course we in India would feel no differently.
There were a number of sources,frbm'whichFrost inherited the technique of using
the ordinary to suggest something other than itself: the Bible, the classics, the poetry
of Wordsworth, and New England writers such as Thoreau or Emerson. He admired
Emerson's use of simplicity to suggest profound meanings. The classical pastoral
tradition and the Romantic tradition of poetry about nature were in his hands
refashioned by the use of New England vocabulary and turns of phrase. Rather than
the fine arts or music that influenced a poet like Wallace Stevens Frost was more
drawn to science and philosophy. He was not as radical an experimenter as Ezra
Pound. He felt poets ought to develop links between sound and sense and emotion.
Metre was important too, but its rigidity should be qualified by the rhythms of actual
speech. (He.was a master in the use of a number of verse forms, however, rhymed
couplets, the sonnet, blank verse and rhyming quatrains.) Drama, also, was vital for
it made writing "unboring," but poetry should contain no excesses--the effect should
be a carefully controlled one. He called the poem in its Seauty and its slow, dignified
exploration of reality, "a momentary stay against confusion" (Selected Prose 36.
Norton 1102). A poem is an affirmative entity for it springs from belief, be it belief
in God, in the poet's own self, in art or in the nation.
