Frost As Farmer: From Immersion To Transcendence

Robert Frost (1874~1963) is one of the greatest American poets in the twentiethcentury. His representative works such as A Boy’s Will (1913), North of Boston (1914),New Hampshire (1923), and A Witness Tree (1942), are popular with ordinary readersand commented by critics around the world. He won prizes and honors that no otherAmerican poet had ever won before him or is likely to win again.Frost is widely studied for his simple style of writing and unique ways ofexpression. He is thought to be easy to understand by some readers and critics becausehe uses plain expressions and simple rhythms in his poetry. His simplicity stirscontroversy within critics and most of them regard Frost as a cunning poet who uses hiswisdom to hide deep thoughts underneath simple words.Frost is called "the poet of New England" because the experiences of him as afarmer in that district are reflected in most of his poems. Frost depicts subject matters ofrural life in his poems and captures important elements to create poems:"sound ofsense" and "verbal sounds". Frost deliberately inherits traditional versification withinnovative variations to create harmonious musical effects. Rural working becomesimportant contents of Frost’s life and poems, and is not taken for ornament or as posture.And this way of creating is quite different from that of the elite modern poets. Frost triesto transcend his rural life experiences by using daily, simple emblematic images (e.g.working tools) to convey deep philosophical meanings; and he writes with perspectivesof pastoral form to imply his poetic thoughts of uncertainty and unfinishedness in hispoems. To Frost, the process of engaging with farming work is similar to that of writingpoems; and he mingles the physical work with the mental activity to transcend hisearthly rural life experiences to confront the real world. Frost makes readers able tounderstand his implied through their own effort.It is hard to regard Frost as a modern poet by judging from the writing style andthemes he chooses. But Frost is a genuine modern poet because his poetics of ambiguity,restraint, uncertainty, and unfinishedness are his unique ways to deal with the basicproblems every modern individual confronts in modern society–to find human beings’proper position in an uncertain world. His transcendental gesture to confront this chaoticand complicated world is both impressive and appreciable; and his prosody, metaphorand philosophy are significant to modern poetry and the modern world.