robert frost biography 1874 - 1963

 Robert Frost Biography (1874 - 1963)

Robert Frost Biography (1874 - 1963)


Robert Frost (1874-1963) has been the most widely read American poet of this century. Though on the surface his poems seem to be simple, direct and easy-to-understand, they are complex, involved and not-so- easy to comprehend at the deeper level. The surface clarity of his poems invariably conceals their hidden complexity. A New England oonature poet, Frost, ironically, was discovered in England when two of his first collections of poems A Boy's Will (1912) and North of Boston (1914) were published there. Though he is a nature poet, he is different from Wordsworth in that nature merely provides Frost with situations, images and metaphors which he sometimes uses symbolically. What gives Frost's nature poems their strength is the combination of vivid descriptive realism and a meditative quality, supported by his wit and wry humour, by which he drives home truths that are innate and hidden in the human heart. However, to capture their multiple meanings, a reader has to take a hard look at and probe deep into his poems.


Frost's 'Mending Wall' is a nature poem from North of Boston. The poem is based on a typical New England annual spring activity of farmers who mend the stone walls of farms after hunters and the frosts of winter have disordered and damaged them. But the poem slowly goes beyond this situation when it presents a conflict between the two attitudes expressed by the speakers therein. Whereas the farmer-speaker begins. with the view: 'Something there is that doesn't love a wall' the neighbour insists on what his father has repeatedly told him, 'Good fences make good neighbors. The poem grows out of the tension between the narrator's enlightened voice and the neighbour's tone dictated by custom and convention. The poet thus uses a common enough situation to probe into the mysterious depths of human nature and motivation. The questions one has to answer at the end are: (a) is this only a regional poem? and (b) does the poet resolve the contraries that form the basis of the poem?

Post a Comment

Previous Post Next Post