Characteristics of Robert Frost 's Poetry

Characteristics of Robert Frost 's Poetry

Introduction :

 Robert Frost is one of the most popular and most honored Poet of America. He thoughts against the traditional poetry, he wanted poetry, he wanted poetry to be as free and natural as love. His central themes are men and women, Humanity, loneliness , isolation and Nature, like Wordsworth, he chose incidents and situation from common life as the subjects of his poem.

Clarity and Simplicity

The first things that strikes a student of Frost 's Poetry it is clarity. At a time when poets were inclined to show off their erudition, and when a poetry was full of esoteric reference, Frost' s Poetry is clear and specific.

Universality and Depiction of Rural life

Frost 's Poetry celebrates the countryside of New Hampshire. But he is not a regional Poet. He may began with geography, he has ability to take his poetry into an un mappable country. His poem give real and living people. Frost shows a wordsworthian interest in the the poor common people, and portrays them realistically.

Realism

Frost truly said of himself,

" I am not a regionalist, i am a realist.

 I write about realms of democracy and realms of the spirit. "

Ezra pound has commented on the effectiveness of the portrayal of Frost 's Character. " Mr. Frost' s people are distinctly real. Their speech is real ; he has know them i don't want much to meet them but i know that they exist, and what is more that they exist as he portrayed them.

All this makes it obvious that Frost 's method was that of realism. He was not like the romantic poets interested in extraordinary and remote things.

Dramatic Quality

A very important feature of Frost 's Poetry it is Dramatic Quality. Poems like'  Home Burial ','  Blue Barries ' and '  The witch of coos ' the best example of Frost' s genius in writing Dramatic poems. In 'Home Burial' we have a man and wife facing a crisis. The wife is almost cracking up under the strain of the grief cauesd by death of their child.

The feeling of horror that she experiences on seeing the graveyard " so small window frames the whole of it"  and the quickly piled burial mound with the gravel leaping in the air, and the stains of mud on the man 's shoes is vividly conveyed.

His Language, Diction and Versification

As for Frost 's Language, it may be said that his poetry speaks itself. He uses simple words and weaves into verse the actual tones of common speech. His words come from plain language of every day talk. Every words counts, every words somehow is made to add to the mood of the poem. " In Mending Walls" There is not only the attitudes but actual tone of the countrymen lines such as these..

He is all pine and i am apple orchard

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cone under his pines. I tell him.

Out of their context, lines sound as If they have have been drwan straight from the country man 's stock of proverbial wisdom. But their fuller meaning strikes up when we read them in their context. Frost is perhaps the only Poet who satisfied the wordsworthian theory of poetic Diction. His tone is conversational and his manner dramatic, but his experiments with Various meters are no less significant. A skilled versifier, he has employed a large number of meters in his poetry.

His Philosophy

The Simplicity of Frost 's verse is leading. It, at time cloaks the depth of his Philosophy. He was always a patient and persistent seeker after truth. Neither in Politics nor in poetry was he willing to surrender himself and his conviction as he says in " The Black Cottage". And " Mending Walls"  is one of those poems where Frost makes certain significant observations of human life and conduct. He airs two contradictory opinion regarding the erection of a wall between the compounds of two neighbors

One is......

        Something there is that doesn't love a wall

And the other...

Good fences make good neighbors.

As a Poet of Democracy

Like Whitman, Frost was a Poet of Democracy. Both writers are profoundly interested in Brotherhood and fellowship. But they approach the problem differently. But Frost, more realistic than Whitman. Like Whitman, Robert Frost was also patriotic though he expressed his patriotism in more subdued tone than Whitman 's loud trumpeting of national sentiments.