Assignment on Robert Frost as a Modern Poet
Name : Chauhan Hetal M
Course: M.A English
Paper No. :10
Paper Name :American
Literature
Unit:1 ,Poem by Robert
frost
Semester:03
Roll No.:14
Email Id: hetalchauhan137@gmail.com
Submitted To: Dr. Dilip
Barad,Smt.S.B.Gardi,Department Of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji,
Bhavnagar Universit
Robert Frost as a Modern Poet:
Robert Frost as a Modern Poet:
I took the one less traveled by' (18-19)
These lines appear in Robert Frost's poem, 'The Road Not Taken'. Even if you've read very little poetry, you're most likely somewhat familiar with this quote. This is because this poem, like much of Robert Frost's poetry, was and has remained particularly popular in American culture.
The popularity that Frost experienced throughout his career is due in part to the definitively American settings and themes found in his poems. A tremendous amount of his work, for example, takes place in New England and features experiences that are commonly associated with the region. Likewise, the themes of Frost, such as individualism and the need to challenge social norms, resonate particularly well with the ideals that are at the heart of American ideology. Frost's success is truly impressive, and, in addition to the rest of Frost's lengthy list of accomplishments, he earned four Pulitzer prizes and served as the Poet Laureate for America from 1958 to 1959
Life
:
Frost
was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco. Following the death of his
alcoholic father, he moved to Massachusetts in 1885. Although Frost was eager
to become a poet, he dropped out of Dartmouth College after less than one full
semester and went on to work in a handful of jobs in which he struggled to be
successful. One of the biggest failures Frost experienced was his inability to run a farm in New Hampshire that had been given to him by a family member. Although Frost wrote poems early in the morning on the farm, he decided to return to school, studying at Harvard as a special student. Again unsuccessful, Frost moved his wife and children to England because living there was considerably cheaper.
After two years in England, Frost had his first book of poems, A Boy's Will, published. While in England, Frost became friends with many notable poets, including Ezra Pound. Frost continued writing, published North of Boston in 1914, and in 1915 moved back to America. Living on a farm in New Hampshire, Frost continued to produce poetry at the same time as he taught English. Frost continued to write and teach at various colleges for the next few decades, being awarded fellowships and teaching positions at a handful of schools throughout America.
Frost was ultimately awarded so many honorary degrees that he famously sewed them into a blanket. His career continued to flourish throughout the rest of his life, and he even read at John F. Kennedy's presidential inauguration in 1961. He later died in 1963 from complications resulting from a surgical procedure.
Frost
as a Modern Poet
In spite of the Pastoral
element predominant in Frost’s poems, he is still a modern poet because his
poetry has been endowed with the awareness of the problems of man living in the
modern world dominated by Science and Technology. However, he was a
contemporary and friend to such modernist greats as Ezra Pound and Wallace
Stevens. But as a modern poet Frost is different from other modern poets.
While modernist poetry is
sometimes associated with an elitist culture that takes poetry away from the
general public through experimental forms and esoteric references, Frost’s is a
mordern poet in his rural, working-class persona, his traditional, metered
voice and use of colloquial phrases, as well as the mundane subjects of most of
his poems.
Ø
The major modern themes
The modern elements of his poetry are those of capitalism, the
self-centeredness of the modern man, the bored existence, isolation, dilemma,
and symbolism.
Ø
Two major poems
The poems that seemed to me most striking modern in nature are The Death of
the Hired Man and Home Burial. The two poems are similar in nature that in both
of them there is a conflict between the husband and the wife. Here the husbands
represent a view of life which is very antithetical to wives’.
In the former poem there are three characters: Warren, Mary and Silas.
Warren, the domineering husband represent the capitalism ,Mary, the cowed wife
is a foil to her husband and Silas represent the lot of the millions of the
workers who are the victims of the modern capitalistic society .Like Silas
there are millions of the workers around the globe who toil and toil ,but
remain unrewarded and die an unlamented death.
Thus the central figure of the poem is Silas, whose death the poem records.
The character of Silas is very pathetic and sympathy arousing. Silas in his old
age, helpless and useless, is a pathetic decrepit figure alienated from the
world, with no shelter over his head and with no home to go to. His self
respect makes him feel ‘ashamed to please his brother’ and as a result he is
also isolated from his rich banker brother.
It is true that Warren has some accusations against Silas that he left the
farm during the busy days. But in this case Warren also can’t fully understand
Silas’s character. Why did he leave? He left for ht higher wages. It shows that
Silas was very poorly paid for his labor. So, Warren does not find any fault in
his own capitalistic manner by which he tried to buy the labor of Silas in
return of the little wages. In this way he represents the capitalist society of
the modern world.
The poem Home Burial is also based on a modern theme namely the
self-centeredness. Here the over-wrought wife is a foil to the practical
husband. They hold two diametrically opposite views of life. The wife ,under
the burden of the grief over the death of her first new-born ,can’t forget that
her husband himself dug the grave of their own child in their little grave-yard
and himself buried him there. But to the husband, it seems a normal act that he
should have dug the grave of his own son. He has come to accept the death of
his son as an accident whose grief can be submerged beneath the everyday existence
of life.
In order to make his wife accept the accident the husband gives some
arguments. He says-
No, from the time when one is sick to death
One is alone and he dies more alone.
Friends make pretence of following to the grave
But before one is in it, their mind is turned.
Thus the husband speaks out the selfish nature of the modern men who even
betray with the dead. All human sympathy is gone and it has been replaced by
selfishness. In this way the poem is a modern domestic epic, which exposes some
modern crises to our eyes.
Mending Wall
The poem Mending Wall is also very modern in its approach. The poem is
based on the modern theme of isolation. Modern men built boundaries and made
themselves isolated from each other. Frost’s metaphysical treatment of this
physical and psychological isolation is also an evidence of his modernity. In
“Mending Walls”, Frost juxtaposes the two opposite aspects of the theme of the
poem and then leaves it to the reader to draw his own conclusion. The
conservative farmer says:
Good fences make good neighbor
and the modern radical farmer says:
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
But the question remains unsolved. And it is up to the readers if they will
keep the wall or pull down it.
Ø
Modern approach to Nature
It is true that Frost’s poetry abounds in pastures and plains, mountains
and rivers, woods and gardens, groves and bowers, fruits and flowers, and seeds
and birds. But his approach to nature and this natural phenomenon are different
from the Romantics and is very realistic and modern in nature. His retreat to
the country side is not the romantic escape from the harsh, unpleasant
realities of modern life. The rural world, the world of nature into which he
withdraws, is not a world of dreams ,a pleasant fanciful Arcadia ,but harsher
and more demanding than the urban world.
Unlike Romantics he has taken notice of both the bright and dark aspects of
nature as we see in his poem “Two Tramps in Mud Time”. Beneath the apparently
beautiful calm there is lurking turmoil and storms:
Be glad of water, but don’t forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
In fact the world of nature in Frost’s poetry is not a world of dream. It
is much more harsh, horrible and hostile than the modern urban world. Hence his
experience of the pastoral technique to comment on the human issue of modern
world his realistic treatment of Nature, his employment of symbolic and
metaphysical techniques and the projection of the awareness of human problems
of the modern society in his poetry justly entitle him to be looked up to as
modern poet.
Ø
Problems of Modern life
In fact, Frost’s poetry portrays the disintegration of values in modern
life and the disillusionment of the modern man in symbolical and metaphysical
terms as much as the poetry of great, modern poets does, because most of his
poems deal with persons suffering from loneliness and frustration, regrets and
disillusionment which are known as modern disease. In “An old Man’s Winter
Night”, the old man is lonely, completely alienated from the society, likeness,
the tiredness of the farmer due to over work in “Apple-Picking” and as a result
of it his yielding to sleep:
For I have too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of great harvest I myself desired.
The Poem The Road Not Taken also deals with the dilemma of the modern mind.
The poem depicts the confusion which prevails in modern life. The modern man
does not know which way to go and it is difficult for him to make a choice. He
is confused and his life does not have a clear purpose. The speaker in the poem
represents the modern man, who habitually wastes energy in regretting any
choice made, but belatedly and wishfully sighs over the attractive alternative
which he rejected:
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.
Ø Symbolism
The symbolic technique followed by Frost is also very modern in nature. The
poems that are rich in symbolic meaning are Mending Wall, The Road Not Taken,
Stopping by Woods by Snowy Evening, Birches etc.
Mending Wall is a symbolic poem in which he describes an anecdote typical
of the conservative approach of the rural people in New England, but it has the
universal symbolic implication.
The poem Stopping By woods on a Snowy Evening is also full of symbols. The
poem symbolically expresses the conflict which everyone feels between the
demands of the practical life and a desire to escape into the land of reverie.
The closing stanza of the poem is especially symbolic.
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.
“The Road Not Taken” symbolizes the universal problem of making a choice of
invisible barriers built up in the minds of the people which alienate them from
one another mentally and emotionally thought they live together or as neighbors
in the society. Similarly the Birch trees in “Birches” symbolize man’s desire
to seek escape from the harsh suffering man to undergo in this world.
Critics have a difference of opinion over considering him a modern poet.
Frost is a pastoral poet – poet of pastures and plains, mountains and rivers,
woods and gardens, groves and bowers, fruits and flowers, and seeds and birds.
They do not treat such characteristically modern subjects as ‘the boredom
implicit in sensuality’, ‘the consciousness of neuroses’ and ‘the feeling of
damnation’.
But the recent critical conversations have resuscitated a little noted
argument from the late seventies in favor of viewing Frost as modernist.
While Frost does not place the whole course of Western history into doubt
or experiment with innovative formal structure and with the position of the
reader – characteristics of the work of other modernist poets -- he does tend
toward a critique of the increasing alienation of modern life, as well as
foster a sense of the visual that is so important to some groups of modernists
like the imagists (who favorably reviewed Frost’s work).
According to J.F.Lynen the use of the pastoral technique by Frost in his
poems, does not mean that the poet seeks an escape from the harsh realities of
modern life. He argues that it provides him with a point of view.
Frost uses pastoral technique only to evaluate and comment on the modern
lifestyle. His pastoralist thus registers a protest against the disintegration
of values in the modern society and here he is one with great poets of the
modern age like T.S. Eliot, Yeats and Hopkins.
Ø
Conclusion
In short, Frost is a modern poet in more ways than one.
He may not depict the outward conditions and events of modern life, but the
central facts of modern experience, the uncertainty and painful sense of loss,
the disintegration and confusion of values, the frustration and
disillusionment, are all there, and they seem more bleak and terrifying because
they are presented in their nakedness, stripped of all their social, political
and economic manifestations. And his mode of expression is symbolic and
indirect. All this is the mark of a genuinely modern poetry.
Comments
Post a Comment