Robert Frost to me seems a master of his audience. He appeals to the things that people will love through the ages; family, love, peace, nature, descriptive diction, and vocabulary that transpasses generations. His metered poetry varies like the music playing in the background of a movie. Frost was a pastoral poet, he was born in California, but many of the sources that influence came from English Poets. Not every poem was comforting, there were a few that brought tears to my eyes. "Out, out--"was one of those poems. How greif stricken I felt when I read about the that the little boy lost his life. Frost's vocabulary burrsts open with adjectives, and his words sail across the page more fluidly than a sailboat upon the ocean. His suitcase of words made very clear pictures in my mind, and yet they seem to reach understanding well, no matter who reads them.
In "Neither Out Far, Nor In Deep", I felt that Frost was saying that humans in general do not enjoy the mundane, or ordinary things in life/present moments(represented by the land), but rather we look out to something that is not the present. Frost indicates symbolically that people waste time pondering about things that they cannot see. One cannot see far into the future, therefore, isn't it better to live in the moment? This poem was thought provoking, and made me want to live in the moment. I began to think how the people on the beaches are like the people who get up, go to work, go home, and do the same thing every day, without pleasure, because they don't love "where" they are at.
The last poem that interested me deeply was "The Gift Outright". This poem was part of an innaugural ceremony for Kennedy, and I will say that it is Patriotic, though not completely accurate. There is an ideal America that Frost described, which may have been his image of America, given the knowledge that he had. I cannot say that I am surprised that this seems a little too sugar coated, given that it is linked to politics. It doesn't speak of taking the land from the Native Americans, because that would not bring a smile to America's face at innauguration time.
In "Neither Out Far, Nor In Deep", I felt that Frost was saying that humans in general do not enjoy the mundane, or ordinary things in life/present moments(represented by the land), but rather we look out to something that is not the present. Frost indicates symbolically that people waste time pondering about things that they cannot see. One cannot see far into the future, therefore, isn't it better to live in the moment? This poem was thought provoking, and made me want to live in the moment. I began to think how the people on the beaches are like the people who get up, go to work, go home, and do the same thing every day, without pleasure, because they don't love "where" they are at.
The last poem that interested me deeply was "The Gift Outright". This poem was part of an innaugural ceremony for Kennedy, and I will say that it is Patriotic, though not completely accurate. There is an ideal America that Frost described, which may have been his image of America, given the knowledge that he had. I cannot say that I am surprised that this seems a little too sugar coated, given that it is linked to politics. It doesn't speak of taking the land from the Native Americans, because that would not bring a smile to America's face at innauguration time.
Sigh. I wish I could write analytically without being judgemental. Then maybe my sentiments could be as beautiful and striking as "His suitcase of words . . ."
ReplyDeleteThanks PLL :)
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