On Modernistic Features Of Robert Frost's Nature Poems

As an American poet, Robert Frost is famous throughout the world. Yet until now, the critic world often avoids discussing what literary category his poetry should be put into. This is mainly because he adopts largely the conventional form instead of the free verse form as his contemporary poets, such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.Through an analysis of the modernist revolution, the modern poetry and an analysis of Frost's nature poems, this thesis attempts to present some of the modernistic features of Frost's nature poems, demonstrating that a poet, whatever form he adopts, cannot live and write completely devoid of any impact of his era, of the modernist revolution; therefore explaining from this angle why some of the compilers of the history of American literature regard him as one of the two nuclei of modern poetry together with Eliot.Frost's view of nature is different from that of the Romanticists'. In contrast to the Romanticists' religious veneration of nature as teacher, guide, and nurse, Robert Frost stresses the mindlessness, unconsciousness and nonhuman otherness of nature. He avoids the pathetic fallacy, that is, he avoids projecting human feelings into natural objects.A comparison is made with Wordsworth, whose theme is the spirit immanent in nature and man. Wordsworth's essential poetic idea is the union of mind and external reality. But for Frost, there is a sharp contrast, an impassable gulf, between human beings and nature. In Frost's eye, nature is completely alien, indifferent and physical. Human's love, fear, death, is never any concern of nature.Frost's use of nature is very crafty. Most of Frost's poems use concrete New England particulars, but he should not be considered a regional poet. He observes something in nature and says this is like that. He leads you to make a connection. He is always using nature images and implying an analogy to some human concern.His use of New England as a symbolic microcosm of the natural world is remarkably effective.Frost uses nature as a background. Setting the vast cosmos as background, Frost foregrounds human beings' activities, efforts, and striving and struggles in order to investigate existence. He usually begins a poem with an observation of something in nature and then moves toward a connection to some human situation and concern.Human beings think that the nature around them is mysterious, and never stop their search for the meaning of nature. Yet human beings cannot always find a certain answer. Their activities of exploring into the unconscious themselves, and the prevalence of uncertainty in his poems, are characteristic of modern poetry, which resulted from the influence of the modern science.Human beings in Frost's poems find and recognize the beauty of nature. They love nature's beauty, yet at the same time, they are quite aware of nature's fickleness and destructiveness. They are also bewildered and sometimes saddened by nature's continuous change. Frost's contradictory view of nature, the contradictions and duplicity as revealed in his poems are also features of modern poetry.Frost's work was in the intellectual and political ferment of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In a world of disorder, disorientation and disillusionment, people at that time of America were full of desperation, anxiety and fear - the fear of war, of loneliness and of death. Frost describes these feelings of people in his poems. And these feelings are apparently the theme of many modern poets, including Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot.