Major American Poets - Robert Frost
By Lisa Boston Frye
“I had a lover’s quarrel with the
world.”
(inscription on his tombstone)
I
thought I knew nothing about poetry until I began to read the lines of Robert
Frost whose memorable words have stood the test of time and reminded me that
yes I have been acquainted with poetry over the years.
Robert
Frost was a New Englander despite his birth in San Francisco, California, in
1874. He came home to his roots
when he was eleven years old after the death of his father from
tuburculosis. Frost loved New
Hampshire and Vermont and the farms where he lived and worked throughout his
long life. Frost liked to say that
he stuck to two things - poetry and family. He thought of himself as a “symbolic farmer and a
symbolic teacher.” Of
his poetry he said, “these poems are written in parable, so the wrong
people won’t hear them and so be saved.” and “My
poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.” and “It’s
organized violence by language.”
(from Voices and Visions video)
Frost
married his high school sweetheart, Elinor White, with whom he fell madly in
love. Of Elinor and their love he
wrote, “never again would birdsong be the same.” She shared the honor of school
valedictorian with Frost at Lawrence High School. In final speeches to their classmates, Robert spoke of a
“Monument to Afterthoughts Unveiled”, and Elinor said that
“Conversation is the Definition of Life”. These two precepts became the basis of thought for the
poetry of Robert Frost.
(from
Voices and Visions video)
Robert
Frost lived his life guided by an instinct to protect what he was or wanted to
be. A college atmosphere stifled
him, and he left Harvard without a degree after a bout with tuburculosis and the birth of his second child. Although he lost friends and
connections by leaving Harvard, he didn’t feel sorry about it. He said, “I did not regret leaving, however, for I could not
stay.” (from www.RobertFrost.com)
I
shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere
ages and ages hence:
Two
roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I
took the one less traveled by,
And
that has made all the difference.
(from The Road Not Taken)
Three years later his eldest child, Elliot, died
suddenly of typhoid fever, an incident that caused problems in his
marriage. Some believe Frost wrote
the poem “Home Burial”
to address this period in his life.
In the poem there is an
element of self accusation. Home
Burial serves as a record of husband
and wife relations and the aftermath of a death of a child.
(from
Voices and Visions video)
‘God,
what a woman: And it’s come to this,
A
man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.’
‘You
can’t because you don’t know how.
If
you had any feelings, you that dug
With
your own hand--how could you?--his little grave;
I
saw you from that very window there,
Making
the gravel leap and leap in air,
Leap
up, like that, like that, and land so lightly
And
roll back down the mound beside the hole.
I
thought, Who is that man? I didn’t know you.’
And...
‘There
you have said it all and you feel better.
You
won’t go now. You’re
crying. Close the door.
The
heart’s gone out of it: why keep it up?
Amy! There’s someone coming down the
road!’
‘You--oh,
you think the talk is all. I must
go-
Somewhere
out of this house.l How can I make
you--’
‘If--you--do!’ She was opening the door wider.
‘Where
do you mean to go? First tell me
that.
I’ll
follow and bring you back by force.
I will!--’
Frost
was determined to be a successful and universally recognized poet. Since his work wasn’t receiving
the attention it deserved in the United States, Frost decided to uproot his
family and move to England. He
chose England for three reasons.
The first was Elinor’s desire to live ‘under
thatch.’ The second was to
‘live cheap.’ The
third was the ‘great tradition of English lyric poetry’. When he left his farm in Derry, New
Hampshire to move to England, it was difficult to say goodbye. He said, “It all started in Derry
- the whole thing.” (Parini)
It
shall be no trespassing
If
I come again some spring
In
the grey disguise of years
Seeking
ache of memory here.
(from
Voices and Visions video)
Frost wanted to create a reputation back home by
becoming recognized in England. He
put some of his poetry together in a little book and took it to a publisher in
England. Within 3 days he had a
contract. A Boy’s Will was the result.
North of Boston soon
followed. Frost laid out his
career while in England. He was
able to meet most of the major poets in the area. Ezra Pound was helpful is getting Frost introduced to
English society, but Frost didn’t like Pound, and said of him,
“You’re not going to make the same mistake that Pound makes - that my simplicity is that of an
untutored child. I am not
undesigning.” (from Voices and Visions video)
Frost met his best friend, Edward Thomas, while living
in England. Thomas was a writer who had taken the wrong road into
hackwork. Frost encouraged Thomas to write poetry. Although Frost had the bones of The Road Not Taken in note form, the indecision of Thomas in choosing a life’s path
inspired Frost to create the landmark poem that exists today. (from
Parini)
Frost remained
with his family in England for three years. Frost said, “
I owe a lot to the British.”
He became homesick for New England and decided to - “go home,
get a farm and grow “Yankier and Yankier.” His goal
in England was now more than realized and he was receiving the critical
attention in the United States that he desired. (from Voices and
Visions video)
Upon Frost’s return from England, he purchased a
farm in Franconia, New Hampshire.
Farm life gave him inspiration and fodder for his pastoral poetry. “After Apple-Picking” was written “without stumbling a
line”. He wrote “The Death of the Hired Man” in two hours making no changes. Frost couldn’t write unless he heard the voices
carrying on the conversations that he records. (from www.RobertFrost.com)
‘Warren,’
she said, ‘he has come home to die:
You
needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.’
‘Home,’
he mocked gently.
‘Yes,
what else but home?
It
all depends on what you mean by home.
Of
course he’s nothing to us, any more
than
was the hound that came a stranger to us
Out
of the woods, worn out upon the trail.’
‘Home
is the place where, when you have to go there,
They
have to take you in.’
Frost
avoids poetic diction in his poetry.
He prefers to use his own words, and tries to present a natural and
sincere tone in his work.
Conversations with friends gave him moments of greatest joy and it was
this quality of intimacy that he wanted in his poetry. (from
www.RobertFrost.com)
I’m
going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll
only stop to rake the leaves away
(And
wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I
shan’t be gone long. - You come too.
(from
The Pasture)
Frost
tried to make music out of what he called, “the sounds of
sense.” Frost
maintained that whether you wrote prose or poetry, you must have an ear for the
sounds of language. When you
listen to a speaker, hear the words but also the tones of the speech. Note them, imagine them again, and
write them down. This Frost called
“writing with your ear to the voice.” He promoted “bringing in the living sounds of
speech” by capturing the essense of live speech and transferring those
tones to paper. Getting the stuff
of life into your writing style is to be successful at milking the sounds of
sense. (Parini)
Frost’s
life’s ambition was to write
“a few poems it will be hard to get rid of.” Without question he has reached that goal. My favorite poem by Robert Frost is “Stopping
By Woods On A Snowy Evening”.
Whose
woods are these I think I know.
His
house is in the village, though;
He
will not see me stopping here
To
watch his woods fill up with snow.
My
little horse must think it queer
To
stop without a farmnouse near
Between
the woods and frozen lake
The
darkest evening of the year.
He
gives his harness bells a shake
To
ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of
easy wind and downy flake.
The
woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But
I have promises to keep,
And
miles to go before I sleep,
And
miles to go before I sleep.
Robert
Frost died in Boston in 1963 at the age of 88.