Born in 1874 and dead in 1963, Robert Frost is one of America's iconic poets, certainly one of the most important of the beginning of the twentieth century. His poetry often uses rural settings of New England to examine universal human and philosophical themes.
In providing an overview of Frost's style, the Poetry Foundation places Frost's work "at the crossroads of nineteenth-century American poetry [with regard to his use of traditional forms] and modernism [with his use of idiomatic language and ordinary, every day subject matter]." They also note that Frost believed that "the self-imposed restrictions of meter in form" was more helpful than harmful because he could focus on the content of his poems instead of concerning himself with creating "innovative" new verse forms.
Your turn! 1. Can you think of a Spanish poet born around the same date as Robert Frost and who used country settings to speak about human issues?
2. Search and explain what part of the United States is New England.
3. What is Modernism in the English speaking world? How is it different from Spanish "Modernismo"?
4. Do you agree with the last idea expressed about having form restrictions being positive so that the poet can focus on content rather than form? Is it always a positive thing, in your view?
Read the following two poems by Robert Frost. For each of them, say what you think is the idea the author wants to communicate and what the form of the poem is (metre, rhyme, stanza...).
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
