Robert Frost Imagery in his Poetry
Robert Frost - Imagery in his PoetryMy object in living is to unite My advocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done� Frost- "Two Tramps in Mud Time" For Robert Frost it seemed that the deed of writing and interpreting his poetry never ended. His technique included simple dialect and description, his imagery was physical yet hypothetical, and his method showed his opposing views of the universe. Frost said, "The subject of poetry should be common in books�it should happen to everyone but it should have occurred to no one before as material" (Trachea 165). He was known to use anything he could to help the reader understand his writings, and in their own way, learn to interpret them into useful paragons for everyday living. Frost said that poems were merely a basis for which humans can perform in the face of the confusions of everyday life. "In addition to drawing on familiar subject matter as a means of affording him the kind of originality he sought, Frost placed great emphasis on his choice of simple image-making words and phrases for the same reason" (Trachea 166). He is said to have to think more deeply to call up images in order to convey his ideas. Frost uses simple dialect to express the simplicity and eagerness of the American language (Trachea 92). "So far as Frost is concerned, the very measure of poetic performance is in the degree to which it can domesticate the imagination of disaster" (Trachea 114). Frost creates an atmosphere of depth, pulling the reader into the story by his use of descriptive adjectives, such as "ancient", Cole 2 "fresh-painted", and "velvety" (Hadas 59). Frost�s descriptions help us hear the pounding of rain, the rustling of the leaves on trees, and feel the harshness of the cold (Trachea 117). A few of his other descriptions are the desolation, silence, and emptiness that he uses to describe the cottage in "Black Cottage." These terms allow the reader to be drawn in wholly to the story, and they enhance the rhetorical drama of what is occurring- the decay of civilization (Hadas 63). Though it seems that Frost�s work can easily be interpreted through his diction, it is impossible to correctly interpret anything of his without the use of voice inflection (Trachea 114). "Frost�s prose as well as his poetry can be studied for the sound of sense, for the casual qualities of voice and personality he artfully gets into it" (Trachea 87). Frost said that the reader gives words meaning by the way he speaks them, and if a poem is read without the correct use of tone, its meaning is lost all together. Frost was known for his sensitivity to sound: he listened first to the human voice and secondly to the voice of nature and he demonstrated both in his works. To...
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