Man, Nature, and Art in Robert Frost’s Poetry

Abstract

Although Robert Frost’s poetic output is prodigious,1 three things or ideas predominate in his verse, namely: the love of man (or his fellow human beings); the love of nature and the physical world order; and the love of art, especially poetic art. These three areas are what this paper sets out to discuss, and it is along these three aesthetic trajectories that this essay will be divided and addressed. In discussing these areas, an attempt will be made to examine the diversity of Frost’s lyricism, the poet’s sense of Romanticism, and the particular rhetorical and poetic devices which he employs to elucidate or illuminate his work. Frost’s aesthetic range embodies the employment of symbolism, paradox, the use of colloquialism and common speech reminiscent of Wordsworth’s poetic style, the employment of the first person pronoun “I,” as well as the use of the iambic pentameter lyrical structure.

LWATI: A Journal of Contemporary Research, 9(2), 113-123, 2012