1.

A few words about Robert frost:

Robert Frost was an American poet who depicted realistic New England life
through language and situations familiar to the common man. He won four
Pulitzer Prizes for his work and spoke at John F. Kennedy's 1961 inauguration.

Robert Frost was an American poet and winner of four Pulitzer Prizes. Famous
works include “Fire and Ice,” “Mending Wall,” “Birches,” “Out Out,” “Nothing
Gold Can Stay” and “Home Burial.” His 1916 poem, "The Road Not Taken," is
often read at graduation ceremonies across the United States. As a special guest
at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, Frost became a poetic force and
the unofficial "poet laureate" of the United States.

Frost spent his first 40 years as an unknown. He exploded on the scene after
returning from England at the beginning of World War I. He died of
complications from prostate surgery on January 29, 1963.

Early Years
Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, California. He spent the
first 11 years of his life there, until his journalist father, William Prescott Frost
Jr., died of tuberculosis.

Following his father's passing, Frost moved with his mother and sister, Jeanie,
to the town of Lawrence, Massachusetts. They moved in with his grandparents,
and Frost attended Lawrence High School. After high school, Frost attended
Dartmouth College for several months, returning home to work a slew of
unfulfilling jobs.
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Beginning in 1897, Frost attended Harvard University but had to drop out after
two years due to health concerns. He returned to Lawrence to join his wife.

In 1900, Frost moved with his wife and children to a farm in New Hampshire
property that Frost's grandfather had purchased for them—and they attempted
to make a life on it for the next 12 years. Though it was a fruitful time for
Frost's writing, it was a difficult period in his personal life, as two of his young
children died.

During that time, Frost and Eli nor attempted several endeavors, including
poultry farming, all of which were fairly unsuccessful.

Despite such challenges, it was during this time that Frost acclimated himself to
rural life. In fact, he grew to depict it quite well, and began setting many of his
poems in the countryside.

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2. Introduction:

Robert Frost is one of the greatest poets in the history of American literature.
He is a remark cable figure is Frogfish literature for his extra-or ternary
modernism of characters. The pro balms of modern life are read elastically
drawn and rifle cited in the poems of Robert Frost. So he is called a modern
poet. Now we will discuss Frost’s modernism characters in the poems.

Robert Frost has very high status in the American poetry circle and even the
world poetry circle. His illustrious life was crowned with honors: four-time
Pulitzer Prize winner, recitation of his poems for the inauguration of the
President and America's unofficial laureate poet. However, although Robert
Frost's poetry has great influence, it is difficult to classify his poetry in the
history of American literature. In the 1920s and 1930s, the flourishing period of
American literature, he stood out, but seemed out of step with the mainstream
literature. Some critics ascribe his poems to tradition, because his poems do not
experiment new forms, but adopt traditional meter and make good use of rhyme
and pun. But no one can avoid and escape from his poetry. Living in the age of
modernism, Frost's poems have reflected his times. Alienation is a recurring
theme and a central term of modernism in Frost's many poems. The Modernism
tendency of Frost's poems is mainly presented by analyzing the theme of
alienation. Alienation and modernism Theoretically speaking, alienation is the
philosophical and sociological category that reflects the activities and results of
human beings and objectively transforms them into the independent forces that
govern human beings themselves and hostile to human beings, and is associated
with it. Human beings change from the active subject of the social process into
the object. The acceleration of the modernization process promotes the rapid

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growth of all parts of the society, and also "expands the total scale of the
society, making the environment lose its individuality and humanity" ( Kern,
10). There is a reality that works independently of man, that is impermanent or
destructive, that makes the world too big to be understood. The process of
development and the physical world itself seem to function in a way that is
beyond the sense of the world. During this period, free capitalism was transiting
to monopoly capitalism, and the inherent contradictions in capitalist society
became more and more acute and complex. After many devastating disasters,
people have suffered great trauma in all aspects. The sense of survival stability
has disappeared, the degree of life freedom has been greatly reduced, and the
degree of alienation has been deepened. Corresponding to this unreasonable
spirit of the Times is the unreasonable cultural life. In this background,
modernism, one of the most remarkable movements in literature, has emerged.
"The alienation of modern literature is the total alienation of all aspects of
capitalism (Kern, 7) " .

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3. Definition of modernism:

Modernism is a style in art architecture and literature popular in the middle of

the 20th century in which modern. Ideas and methods and materials were used
rather than traditional ones.

Modernism as a literary movement is seen, in large part, as a reaction to the

emergence of city life as a central to the emergence of city life as a central force
in society. Modernist poetry is a mode of writing characterized by technical
innovation in the mode of versification Modernist poetry infnglish is often
viewed as an American phenomenon in origin with leading exponents including
Ezra pound.

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4. Modernism in English literature:

Literature of the 20th Century refers to world literature produced during the 20 th
Century. The fundamental modern change was massive fisillusimment most
modern writers lolled within theme salve for a principle of order. The literature
of the 20th century has an over whelming preoccupation with the self. The
nature of consciousness and the processes of perception. Literature is often
subjective and personal and internal. Authors are concurred with the fragment
action of both experience and thought.

In spite of the Pastoral element predominant in Frost’s poems, he is still a

modern poet because his poetry has been endowed with the awareness of the
problems of man living in the modern world dominated by Science and
Technology.

Critics have a difference of opinion over considering him a modern poet. Frost
is a pastoral poet – poet of pastures and plains, mountains and rivers, woods and
gardens, groves and bowers, fruits and flowers, and seeds and birds. 

In fact, Frost’s poetry portrays the disintegration of values in modern life and
the disillusionment of the modern man in symbolical and metaphysical terms as
much as the poetry of great, modern poets does, because most of his poems deal
with persons suffering from loneliness and frustration, regrets and
disillusionment which are known as modern disease. In “An old Man’s Winter
Night”, the old man is lonely, completely alienated from the society, likeness,
the tiredness of the farmer due to over work in “Apple-Picking” and as a result
of it his yielding to sleep:

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 For I have too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of great harvest I myself desired

His metaphysical treatment of the subject in some of his poems is also an

evidence of his modernity. In “Mending Walls”, Frost juxtaposes the two
opposite aspects of the theme of the poem and then leaves it to the reader to
draw his own conclusion. The conservative farmer says: Good fences make
good neighbour and the modern radical farmer says: Something there is that
doesn’t love a wall,

According to J.F.Lynen the use of the pastoral technique by Frost in his poems,
does not mean that the poet seeks an escape from the harsh realities of modern
life. He argues that it provides him with a point of view.

Frost uses pastoral technique only to evaluate and comment on the modern
lifestyle. His pastoralism thus registers a protest against the disintegration of
values in the modern society and here he is one with great poets of the modern
age like T.S.Eliot, Yeats and Hopkins.

Another poetic technique adopted by Frost which makes him a modern poet is
symbolism. “The Road Not Taken” symbolizes the universal problem of
making a choice of invisible barriers built up in the minds of the people which
alienate them from one another mentally and emotionally thought they live
together or as neighbors in the society. Similarly the Birch trees in “Birches”

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symbolize man’s desire to seek escape from the harsh suffering man to undergo
in this world.

Unlike Romantics he has taken notice of both the bright and dark aspects of
nature as we see in his poem “Two Tramps in Mud Time”. Beneath the
apparently beautiful calm there is lurking turmoil and storms: Be glad of water,
but don’t forget The lurking frost in the earth beneath.

 In fact the world of nature in Frost’s poetry is not a world of dream. It is much
more harsh, horrible and hostile than the modern urban world. Hence his
experience of the pastoral technique to comment on the human issue of modern
world his realistic treatment of Nature, his employment of symbolic and
metaphysical techniques and the projection of the awareness of human
problems of the modern society in his poetry justly entitle him to be looked up
to as modern poet.

 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
emphasized, implicitly criticizing the craze for breaking down walls and
imposing brotherhood.

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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 symbolizing passion, some ice symbolic of hatred. But the speaker favors
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.

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 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.

5. Major modern poets:

Walt whit man, William Butler yeast, Wyss tan Hugh Auden, Rodent Frost and
Dylan Thomas are major modern poets of the 20th century. They heavy
contributed greatly the modern poetry.
Modernist poetry is different from traditional poetry in several ways: it uses
simplified language and often abandons traditional rhyme and meter. In
addition, the modernist poets moved away from using images of nature, and
they viewed the world with a more pessimistic lens. Finally, the modernists
often left their poems vague and open to interpretation by the reader.

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Like his contemporaries, Frost favored using simplified language in his poems.
And he wrote poems that were not always optimistic. He also lets his readers
interpret his poems by leaving them a little bit vague. But unlike other
modernist poets, Frost stuck to using traditional meter and rhyme. He also lived
in the countryside and used mostly natural images in his poems. So Frost was a
modernist, and he also wasn't. He was a bit of a rebel from both sides. Let's take
a look at one of his most famous poems and see how it and some of his other
poetry both exemplify and go against modernist ideals and how life in the
countryside influenced the images he used in his writing.

'The Road Not Taken'

Robert Frost's most famous poem is called 'The Road Not Taken.' Let's start by
reading the poem.

'The Road Not Taken'

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

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Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

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6. Features of English modern poems:

Modern poetry is dominated by psychology. It is full of contradictions and

questions that issue from the complexities of life it is characterized by scientific
thoughts and knowledge also.

Features of English modern poems:

(1) Stream of consciousness.
(2) Juxtaposition of Characters.
(3) Symbolic representation.
(4) Break down of social Norms.
(5) Rea lactic embody mint of social meanings.
(6) Sense of spiritual loneliness.
(7) Sense of furs traction.
(8) Sense of fissile subornment.
(9) Rejection of the history
(10) Substitution of a my ethical past
(11) Sense of alienation.
(12) Objection of the traditional thought and the traditional moralities.

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7. An Analysis of Frost’s poems:

Robert Frost is a modern poet. He is the contemporary of the great 20 th century

poets like T.S Eliot. Robert Frost has written many remarkable poems. For the
example we can mention the poem like. “The load not Talon”, “Mending wall”,
“out and Out” “Birches”, “The Death of the Hired Man and many other poems.
In the time of the traditional poets his poem as written on simplest subjects. He
avoid, complexly.

Frost’s poetry reflects modern life not in the seers that it depicts the out ward
events and conditions but It brings out the central facts 20 th century experience
the uncertainty and painful loss.

The poem “The Road Not Tate” topics the confusion which prevails in modern
late. It also gives the dilemmas of a modern Nan. The modern man duos not
know which way to go and it is difficult for him to make a choice.

“Two road diverged in a wood

and I-

I took the one less traveled by”

The sense of alienation is a modern phenol men on and Frost deals with it in his
poems.

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In the poem, “Mending wall”.

The poet deals with the theme essentially modern because ignite We find the
problem of separation a vital issue of our time.

This symbolizes the divisions between nations, classes, economic, racial and
religious group. The old farmer in the poem not my refuses to pull down the
useless barriers but insists on having the last words

“Good fences make good neigh boors” Frost is not indifferent to the basic problem
of modern late.

In to poem “Stopping by woods on a snowy Evening” The poet presents a conflict

in a simple realistic way.

He says-

The wood are lovely, dark and deep-

But I have promises to keep

and miles to go be fore I sleep

And miles to go before I sleep.

modernity is a canvass of disbar many

and disinter gyration. Frosts poems we find types modern element.

In the poem, Birr chess” The poet

Presents the acme of modernly-

The feeling of anxiety, hope less sees

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And frustration and desire to

Escape from all.

Much of Frost’s Poetry teals with somber themes “out, out” and the Death of the
Hired man” and the like are the best examples. In out man’s life is under a great
threat of machine world. The world is symbolized as anti of human dream;
happiness and his total existence

8. Touches of modernism in Frosts poems:

Frosts poems have touches of modernism. Robert Frost is a modern poet and is
traditional in his use of classiest and he is use of classics and he is modern in
terms of his structural experiment. His poems become a symbol of modern
comfit in the mind of people. Frets poetry reflects modern life. So he was both a
modern and traditional poet in English literature.

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9. Conclusion:

To sum up, we can say that Frost is a poet of diverse interest.

He is not confined to any theme modern and traditional. Rather he is an

appreciable mixture of both modern and traditional themes.

He always thinks in his own way as a modern poet, his use of symbolism, blank
verse, free rhyme, dramatic dialogues, and lack of sympathy and suffering of men
attract the readers profusely.

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10. Bibliography:

 Coughlan, Patricia & Davis, Alec eds. Modernism and Ireland: The Poetry
of the 1930s (Cork University Press, 1995) ISBN 1-85918-061-2
 Guest, Barbara. Herself Defined: The Poet H.D. and Her World. (Collins,
1985) ISBN 0-385-13129-1
 Jones, Peter (ed.). Imagist Poetry (Penguin, 1972).
 Kenner, Hugh. The Pound Era. (Faber & Faber, 1973).
 Perloff, Marjorie. The Poetics of Indeterminacy. (Northwestern University
Press, 1999). ISBN 0-8101-1764-9
 Redman, Tim. Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991).
 Weinberger, Eliot. The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese
Poetry. (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2004). ISBN 0-8112-1605-
5 Introduction, with translations by William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound,
Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, and David Hinton.
 Gammel, Irene. Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity
(MIT Press, 2002).
 Freytag-Loringhoven, Elsa von. Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (MIT Press, 2011). Introduction and edited
by Irene Gammel and Suzanne Zelazo.

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