The Poetry of Robert Frost

Introduction

My most favorite reason for walking into a secondhand shop or used book store is the possibility of the unknown in what I may find. There’s little point in hoping or expecting something specific on a shelf since it’s basically a math equation where what remains to discover is the difference between what was given to the shop, and what has thus been purchased. Therefore, some days I walk out with little treasures and other days with nothing. One of those successful treasure finds was The Poetry of Robert Frost: All eleven of his books-complete.

I found this omnibus in my local Goodwill some years back and purchased it for a few dollars. Although printed in 1969, this two-inch hard cover book still carried its dust jacket and showed little of its age. I doubt one would be able to discern it was over fifty years old if not for the typewriter-type text style on the inside and the bibliosmia scent (that lovely old book smell). This book was printed before I was alive and could be read and re-read long after I’m in the grave if cared for properly. It may be that well-constructed books are one of the most valuable and useful reusable items man has ever created. This book can attest to that statement.

The Poetry of Robert Frost: All eleven of his books-complete is a compilation of all his past eleven works into one complete and comprehensive edition. This one tome both introduced me to Frost and allowed me to experience all of his poetry. Before finding this book, I was familiar with the name Robert Frost and his very famous and very celebrated poem “The Road Not Traveled”, but I knew little more than that even though he is one of the most famous American poets, having won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times (making him the only poet to achieve such an achievement). I’ve never gravitated towards reading poetry prior to Frost and had avoided it outside of assigned homework and required reading. However, I’ve since changed my mind after finishing this book and also reading Mary Oliver’s Devotions (the latter inspiring me to write my own pieces of poetry).

Frost’s Themes

Frost’s poems kept a familiar theme throughout the eleven books, with a great majority of each gravitating around nature, rural life, and the struggles of the human condition. Even his name Frost is a portrayal of weather upon nature. His descriptions of specific flowers and foliage and noticing the change of seasons upon a forest floor made me realize I’ve never explored a forest or walked similar steps that Frost has in his poetry. That is now something I wish to experience. I don’t live in an area with forests or the changing of seasons from hot to cold, so instead my outdoors encounters revolve around the changing of the skies in a storm and the reptilian life that inhabits the waters.

Compared to the time of Frost’s writings, much of the population is rather distant from nature, with about 80% of the American population residing in urban areas today compared to 51% living in urban areas in the 1910s-1920s, when Frost wrote much of his works. Today we spend much of our time surrounded by industrial walls and when we step outside, it’s mostly asphalt and concrete under our feet. Besides a local park that may have a playground or running trail, there are so few natural places for us to experience that are open to others and free to explore. Most of us have to plan a day trip or vacation in order to reserve a spot at a large park (or in my case a springs) to “be one in nature”. This loss of touch with being outside in the sunshine and fresh air and cloaked with sounds of nature may be having a negative effect on our mental and physical well-being (What is the impact of nature on human health? A scoping review of the literature – PMC).

Another thing I noted while reading Frost was our shared vocabulary has greatly shrunk. I found myself stopped many times on words that I wasn’t familiar with. Some of those words referenced things of that time that haven’t remained in our verbiage, but others I simply had never come across. This decline in vocabulary has been observed since at least the 1970s, but I’d theorize it’s been going on for far, far longer. One just has to read classic literary texts to notice the difference in grammar and vocabulary from then to now.

My Personal Favorites Versus their Popularity

In an effort to allow Frost’s poems to speak to me on their own without any outside influence, I chose to read The Poetry of Robert Frost over a few months and avoided any commentary or opinion on them, even when I had a few questions on their theme or meaning (with one exception: The Fear). I wanted to discover my favorite poems, not just the ones that had survived and thrived over the last one-hundred plus years.

Frost never created a list of his personal favorites and instead wanted to let the readers decide for himself, but after pooling and compiling a list of Frost’s twenty most famous poems based on internet searches, I compared my personal list of favorites with what has stood “the test of time” in popularity and culture. There was some inevitable crossover with my list and the internet’s but not as much as I had anticipated. For those poems that weren’t on my list, I went back and re-read them to see if I could discern what I may have previously missed and there were a few that upon a second reading, I truly loved. It’s amazing that simple words composed in a specific sequence, have the power to make one feel or think differently; to be able to read is a blessing.

Frost’s Most Famous Poems

This first list is twenty of Frost’s poems most often suggested for reading (i.e. his most famous poems).

1. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
2. The Road Not Taken
3. Mending Wall
4. Fire and Ice
5. Nothing Gold Can Stay
6. Birches
7. Acquainted with the Night
8. After Apple‑Picking
9. Home Burial
10. Directive
11. Tree at my window
12. Mowing
13. Desert Places
14. Christmas trees
15. Maple
16. Out, Out
17. The Runaway
18. The Gift Outright
19. The Death of the Hired Man
20. To Earthward

My Favorite Poems

This second list are the poems that I loved the most while reading (in the order they were published). I highlighted the ones that appear on both lists.

1. The Fear– I found this to be one of the more interesting poems. It’s told as a short story of a woman who’s scared when she sees a man, whom she may or may not recognize, walking out on the dark road close to her house. I’m not ashamed to admit that I searched its meaning after reading through it twice. The ending is ambiguous and I wondered if I had missed something. I had. I hadn’t caught that the woman mistook the stranger for her estranged ex-husband and, in my opinion, her words and actions make me believe that she’s disappointed that the stranger is not her ex. It’s as if she was wanting her ex to come look for her, either because she missed something about him, or she had disappeared on him without warning and she was waiting for him to finally track her hiding spot and she wanted that fear to be over.
2. Good Hours
3. The Road Not Taken– The writer chose the road with less wear from others with plans to come back and try the other road, but knowing that it was doubtful he’d ever get a chance to travel the other path.
4. The Exposed Nest– To care so much about something yet never to check on it again shows how quickly we can move on from some things.
5. Birches– my favorite part of this poem:

I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped it’s top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.

6. House Fear
7. The Star-Splitter
8. Out, Out– Is about the death of a young boy. I wondered about the meaning of the title and it refers to Macbeth and how fragile life is.
9. The Witch of Coos
10.  Fire and Ice– I instantly recognized this but couldn’t recall from where at the moment. Bella quotes it in Twilight: Eclipse.
11. Nothing Gold Can Stay– This poem was when I realized that so many of Frosts poems, or quotes from his poems, had been introduced to me without my recognition at the time. Some were familiar to me though we had never met.
12. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
13. The Lockless Door
14. Fireflies in the Garden
15. Acquainted with the Night
16. A Roadside Stand– A poem about country folk needing city money and the broken promises “good doers”.
17. Departmental- A cute poem about working ants and how they have specific jobs.
18. To a Moth Seen in Winter
19. A Considerable Speck
20. Astrometaphysical– Frost thanking the Lord above for the sky and his hope that he sends Frost up and not down.
21. Haec Fabula Docet– A moral tale about not being too prideful to ask or allow others to help.
22. One More Brevity– About a wandering dog who comes in and rests awhile.
23. Some Science Fiction
24. We Vainly Wrestle– A poem with only four lines:

We vainly wrestle with the blind belief
That aught we cherish
Can ever quite pass out of utter grief
And wholly perish.

25. A Masque of Mercy
26. Masque of Reason– The final words stuck with me: “Nothing can make injustice just but mercy”.

List of Frost poems from the first list that I’ve since added to my favorites after a second exposure.

1. Tree at my Window
2. Home Burial page
3. Desert Places
4. Maple