The Realistic Nature and Human Concerns: a Case Study of Poetry of Robert Frost

The several conflicting attitudes concerning man and nature spoken in the poetry of Robert Frost reproduce obvious incongruities in our own life. Readers and detractor think of Frost as a poet of New England, the area he employs most frequently as a background for his poetry. The human insecurity is only suggested by Robert Frost in “An Old Man’s Winter Night” is clear. It gives frequent importance on man’s separation. The speaker in the “Storm Fear” feels his separation and his insecurity in the unipoetry. In this poem he faces natural forces directly.

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, although he never earned a prescribed degree. Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first specialized poem, "My Butterfly," was published on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper “The Independent”. In 1895, Frost married with Elinor Miriam White, who became a main motivation in his poetry until her death in 1938. In 1912, the couple moved to England after their New Hampshire farm failed, and it was abroad that Frost met and was influenced by such contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. While in England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped to encourage and bring out his work. In 1915, Frost returned to the United States, he had published two compilations, A Boy’s Will and North of Boston, and his name and status was established. In nineteen-twenties, he was the nearly everyone celebrated poet in America, and with each new book—including New Hampshire(1923),A Further Range(1936),Steeple Bush(1947), and In the Clearing(1962)—his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes) enlarged. Although his work is mainly associated with the existence and countryside of New England, and though he was a poet of conventional poetry forms and metrics who remained consistently detached from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he is a typically modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in In a 1970 review of The Poetry of Robert Frost, the poet Daniel Hoffman describes Frost’s early work as "the Puritan ethic turned astonishingly lyrical and enabled to say out loud the sources of its own delight in the world," and comments on Frost’s career as The American Bard: "He became a national celebrity, our nearly official Poet Laureate, and a great performer in the tradition of that earlier master of the literary vernacular, Mark Twain." About Frost, President John F. Kennedy said, "He has bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable poetry from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding."Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in Boston on January 29, 1963.The particular aspects of nature expressed in Frost’s poems are often determined by the subjective responses of his characters to their surroundings. He shows people who are emotionally strong, either within themselves or through human tries, as feeling secure in their Relationship with a kind nature is because they are able to accept it and its movements without fear. They are able to cope with the aggression that also seems a part of the natural world. Those, however, who are alone, feeble, and afraid find in their environment a reason for anxiety, and it is in their eyes that nature assumes hostile and malevolent qualities. In several poems, Robert Frost indicates that man fail to understand nature and its relationship with him. Man could not make equilibrium of nature with his relationship. Directly or indirectly in both disbeliever and the puritanical poetry, Robert Frost considers man very much handicapped. He has certain limits. In some religious poems, Robert Frost represents man’s limitations equally. In” The Trial by Existence” the unipoetry which he shows is in different man and his plight. “Nothing but what we somehow choose; Thus are we wholly stripped of pride In the pain that has but one close Bearing it crushed and mystified.” Nature has its own ways and concerns. There is wordsworthian approach as a benevolent nature in some of Robert Frost’s optimistic poetry as we find in “The Pasture” from the volume “a Boy’s Will’. “I am going to clean the pasture spring; I will only stop to make the leaves away And wait to watch the water clear, I may different. Nature has its own honesty, which can man barely understand. Robert Frost’s view point reveals that man must learn to live in the natural order. Robert Frost does not always represent man as fairly so foolishly unrealistic nor does he symbolize him as arrogant and self-centered. It is very rare that Robert Frost takes man to task for attacking nature. Man acts as though God is simply not there in the unipoetry. This is the feeble position of human being because he is living in a Godless unipoetry. Even in this weak position man reacts to put in order his life and familiarity in social terms. Robert Frost sees this attempt, as futile and preposterous. He felt on one hand that the unipoetry and man’s place is out of control and difficult; on the other hand that the unipoetry and man' relationship to it are convenient. We find the opposition between his dark sdide and light side. According to Nitchie- “Individualism is one form of man’s reaction to the evil world. Men become too self-centered. He is absorbed in them. They can become what he called ‘Prudential’.

• A Boy 's Will(1913)

• North of Boston(1914)

• Mountain Interval(1916)

• New Hampshire(1923)

• West-Running Brook(1928)

• The Lovely Shall Be Choosers(1929)

• The Lone Striker(1933)

• From Snow to Snow(1936)

• A Further Range(1936)

• A Witness Tree(1942)

• Come In, and Other Poems(1943)

• Masque of Reason(1945)

• Steeple Bush(1947)

• Hard Not to be King(1951)

Robert Frost depicts this position that men ignore any wider responsibilities. Robert Frost often reveals doubt about the nature of reality. He reveals doubt about the

Robert Frost in his poem “An Old Man’s Winter Night” is clear. It gives common significance on man’s severance. The speaker in the “Storm Fear” feels his separation and his insecurity in the unipoetry.

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• “The Trial by Existence” The poetry of Robert Frost ed. Edward C. Lathem ( New York, Holt , Rinehart and Winston , 1969)

 ‘The Pasture’ The poetry of Robert Frost ed. Edward C. Lathem ( New York, Holt , Rinehart and Winston, 1969)