A Pure "Nature Poet" Or A Symbolist

Robert Frost, one of the most popular and beloved of the twentieth century American poets, is well known for his pastoral and nature poetry. He is regarded as one of the two nuclei of modern poetry together with T. S. Eliot. Of all the well-established and much venerated American poets, Frost is probably the most popular and the least criticized. Many critics see him as a "nature poet" or just merely a pure "fanner poet". However, to categorize him like this is by no means appropriate and reasonable. In his poems, "nature" is just the background for his work, rather than the subject. He usually begins a poem with the "delight" in observing something in nature and then moves towards the "wisdom" in them which has a connection with human psychology, human situation, his search for self and for the meaning of life.Most of Frost's poems use concrete New England particulars as symbols. He selects them from nature, turns them into symbols and leads his readers to go beyond the mere natural objects or the natural incidents. It is in these nature images that the poet loses his self and finds it again, as the poet draws an analogy between his poems and human psychology, as well as his own self.Many critics have done research on the poet's use of symbols in revealing the relationship between man and man, man and nature, man and society. However, what they have neglected is the use of symbolism in revealing the poet's self and the reflection of the poet himself in those poems. Although some have touched on the topic of revealing the poet's self in the poems, they did not go far enough to explore how it comes to a successful application of symbolism to his poems to reveal the poet's self and the meaning of life. I would try to differentiate my thesis by making out my own interpretation of these symbols which symbolize the poet's search for the self and for the meaning of life from the perspective of symbolism and to make a better understanding of the poet and his poetry. I try to make a tentative exploration from the perspective of Yeats' art of symbolism which mainly reveals the poet's self in both an ideal world and the reality and I also try to assure that Robert Frost is not a mere "nature poet" or a pure "farmer poet", rather, he is a great symbolist.