Robert Frost: A Forever Influential Genius
The first poem that attracted me was called “Where the Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein. Consequently, I began to fall in love with the rest of his poems, believing that nobody could compare to the symmetry as well as insanity that flowed with his writing. Then I discovered Robert Frost. Being my literary idol and the base of one of my poems: “I Wish to Dream in Black and White,” he serves as one of the biggest influences in my life. I didn’t notice how much my admiration extended for his literature until a couple days ago.
I was given a task in my English class which was to choose poems that I liked to put together for an anthology. Two out of the three ended up being Robert Frost: “Fire and Ice” and “The Road Not Taken.” “Fire and Ice” speaks of hatred and desire. Both can be just as dangerous and just as powerful. Hatred, being a main factor of isolation and independency could be useful as well as self destructive.
On the other hand, desire is a main factor of passion and fulfillment while also being just as self destructive. What Frost tries to convey is that ending the world in hatred or desire, represented by ice and fire, would be equally pleasant, for both of them show that there is some kind of emotion and humanity still left in the world. The poem “The Road Not Taken” has to do with paths and determination. Two metaphorical paths are presented in front of a man and one being more difficult, and perhaps more rough, is the one he decides to choose. To finalize, the man teaches us that although the journey may have been longer than the other one presented in front of him, it was worth it. Both poems taught me separate lessons which stick by me and have remained in my mind ever since the reading of them.
Finally, the most important poem that I have read by Robert Frost has to be “Out, Out-.” It begins with a short introduction on nature. A tree is cut down and is ignored. The story proceeds into a story of a boy who has an accident and ends up dying towards the end. After his death, the people in the story proceed with their lives, following the cycle of life.
Although it is only natural for humans to experience and forget, the poem conveys a message of corruption among humanity. We, as humans, have forgotten what the importance of birth and death is. True, it is a cycle of life but it is also something that we must protect. We must not give in to the routine of forgetting, we must change that. The tree at the beginning symbolizes how fast the most important things in our lives are forgotten and ignored. However, the most shocking thing about this poem has to do with its structure.
After graphing the sentences and the amount of words in them, my friend and I realized that the poem is in fact in the form of a heartbeat. As the poem climaxes to the accident, the points in the graph go up. And as the boy begins to slowly die, the points being to decrease as well. Ironically, the last point is in fact the lowest point in the graph, symbolizing the death. The intelligence that lies within Robert Frost shocks me and inspires me to take a further step into literature.
I am astonished that subconsciously, Robert Frost, is also a musician. He feels the rhythm in his poems and writes with such elegancy that you could also classify each one for a song. He forces the readers to want to learn more about the messages he is trying to convey and I, for one, will never surpass a Frost poem again.
