Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963)

**lost with out u** · 08-04-2010, 06:43 PM

Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963)

1- A Great American Poet:

Robert Frost is one of the greatest of American poets, he has been called the finest American poet of 20Th century. He has been called, “the voice of America”, and more honours have been showered upon him than any other American poet of the century, he has won world-wide fame and recognition through his poems.

2- A Great pastoral poet:

Frost is a great pastoral poet. The background to his poetry is provided by country-scenes and sights. He writes of rural people and rural occupations and pleasures – e.g. “apple - picking”, “mowing”, “gum-gathering” etc. and the language he uses is the simple, colloquial language of country folk . In his poetry, we do not find the city scenery and city people to whom we are used in modern poetry. There are no shop – girls , truck –drivers , factories, trains and buses in his poetry. But the essentials of city life__ the note of anxiety, the heart-ache and emotional disturbance which characterize life in a big, industrialized city are all there. Life is basically the same everywhere, and it is this basic element which is brought out by Frost. Frost has succeeded in imparting universal significance to pastoral art.

3- A Great Regional poet:

Frost is a great regional poet. The region of Boston forms the background of his poetry. He loved this region and knew it intimately and succeeded in interpreting it realistically and accurately. He succeeded in capturing the very tone, diction and rhythm of “yankee” speech. He writes of a particular region, but from the particular he constantly rises to the universal and general. He writes of the joys and sorrows, loves and hatreds of the simple yankees, but shows that all these are common to all humanity. Regionalism in his hands acquires a universal appeal.

4- His originality as a Nature-Poet :

Frost is a great poet of Nature. Like Wordsworth , his love of Nature is limited to nature in a particular district. But Frost approach to nature is realistic . He does not shut his eyes to the harshness and cruelty of Nature, and he does not regard nature as a kindly mother. In his opinion, Nature and man are two separate things. He constantly emphasizes the difference, rather than the similarity, between man and nature. He believes that inseparable barriers divide man from Nature.

5- Frost as a Lyrical Poet:

Although Frost has left behind him a large number of philosophical and narrative poems, his genius was essentially lyrical. His lyrics have the simplicity, brevity, intensity and melody which characterize the lyric at its best. His lyrics are admired by all readers.

6- Frost as a traditional and classicist:

Frost is a traditionalist and classicist. His traditionalism is seen in his suspicion of new ideas and innovations. His pre-occupation with country scenes and sights and with simple rural folk links him up with romantic – Georgian because most English poetry has been written in this form.

Frost is a classicist, he says what he has to say in the fewest possible words. He is classicist in his manner, proverbial wisdom, and his habit of reflecting and moralizing.

7- His simplicity & His complexity :

He is extremely simple, he writes of the simplest subjects, and he says what he has to say in the most lucid and simple manner. The readers admire him and go to him again and again, for they can understand and appreciate him without any trouble. But this simplicity of Frost is deceptive. A careful reading of his poems reveals that he is subtle, complex and makes extensive use of symbols like other modern poets as T.S.Eliot, W.B.Yeats, Ezra Pound and Auden. He brings together opposites of life in the manner of the metaphysical, he is a highly conscious artist and thinker.

A Skilful combination of an outer lightness with an inner gravity is one of his major poetic achievements.

8- Themes in his poetry:

Frost has written on almost every subject, but alienation and isolation are the major themes of his poetry. Frost is a great poet of boundaries and barriers, barriers is a predominant theme in Frost's poetry. According to him uncountable barriers separate man from nature, from God and from his fellow men, and the result is loneliness and isolation, severe stress and strain and mental agitations.