Robert Frost as a modern poet

Question: ( 1 ) : Justify Robert Frost as a modern poet.

           

            Answer: The term ‘modernity’ simply demands the presence of irregular verse forms, fragmentary sentences, learned allusions, ironic contrasts, erudite and abstruse symbolism in poetic composition. Actually modernism implies a keen perception into the modern psyche, the modern consciousness. However, there are two schools of critic with their different views on considering Robert Frost to be a modern poet. T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Ezra Pound and W. B. Yeats, the contemporaries of Frost, do not regard him as a modern poet but some other 20^th Century critics, Cleanth Brooks, Trilling and Lynen establish him to be a modern poet.

            Robert Frost’s world is rural. Undoubtedly he retires into countryside and such retirement is not a romantic escape from the unpleasant realities of modern life rather it provides him with a point of view, a frame of reference, for studying and commenting on the facts of modern life. Frost studies life and strips down to its elemental simplicity - and this simplicity is his norm of judgement - not only the urban life, but of life in general. However, “Birches” shows his realistic attitude to life and it also tells us that man constantly aspires for things beyond the world. Frost suggests that one should not do it rather one should know and love the things of the world and let the afterlife take care of itself. So the speaker says that:

“Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”

           

            Frost has used a method of indirection as used by modern poets like T. S. Eliot and others. In “The Waste Land” Eliot juxtaposes the present and the past. The past here is definitely meant to reveal and interpret the present. Likewise, in Frost’s poetry, the rural and the urban are juxtaposed – the rural serving as a standard for and comment on the urban. The metaphoric poem, “Mending Wall” shows the necessity of walls, of clear demarcations of property is emphasised, implicitly criticising the craze for breaking down walls and imposing brotherhood.

            Frost has an affinity with the modern poets in style and symbolic technique. “Fire and Ice” is a symbolic poem. The speaker of the poem is dwelling on the two theories for the end of the world. Some contend that the world will perish in fire symbolising passion, some ice symbolic of hatred. But the speaker favours passion and upon second thought; he adds that hatred is powerful enough to destroy the world. They both are capable of destroying the world. The underlying symbolic meaning is that the intensity of man’s passions, which makes him human, creates the inhuman forces of disaster. The speaker says:

“Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.”

            Like many other modern poets, Frost deals with the tension and problems of modern people. Just as in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot, the protagonist is suffering from indecision to propose the woman he loves, so in “Road Not Taken” by Frost, the speaker hesitates to choose one of the two roads. But here he becomes successful in electing one of them after a long period of hesitation. The speaker’s hesitant mind is expressed:

“And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could”

            Frost’s poetry gives evidence that he believes in some kind of god, and that he adheres to a strict sense of values, but that his beliefs are not those of the traditional Christian. He rejects the acceptable idea of heaven. In “After Apple Picking” he suggests that man’s life after death is akin to the hibernation of an animal. He also rejects the rigid orthodoxy which he sees in most religions. So there is not denying of the fact that such an approach to religion is modern.

            To sum up the analysis, it is apparent that if we consider all the aspects and examine all the important poems we will definitely come to the conclusion that Robert Frost is a genuine modern poet because his poems deal with most of the subject matters a modern poem contains.

Md. Saiful Alam

B. A. Honours and M. A. in English

Lecturer of English

Queen’s College, Dhaka

E-mail: suman64924@gmail.com

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