ROBERT FROST (1873-1963)

Biography
Poetry (main features)
«The Figure a Poem Makes»

Poems:
«The Gift Outright»
«The Wood-Pile»
«Mending Wall»
«The Road not Taken»
«Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening»
“The land was ours
before we were the
lands”
From “The Gift Outright”
 The Gift Outright
1 The land was ours before we were the land’s.
2 She was our land more than a hundred years
3 Before we were her people. She was ours
4 In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
5 But we were England’s, still colonials,
6 Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
7 Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
8 Something we were withholding made us weak
9 Until we found out that it was ourselves
10 We were withholding from our land of living,
11 And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
12 Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
13 (The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
14 To the land vaguely realizing westward,
15 But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
16 Such as she was, such as she would become.


The Gift Outright

1 The land was ours before we were the land’s.

2 She was our land more than a hundred years
3 Before we were her people. She was ours
4 In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
1 The land was ours before we were the land’s.
2 She was our land more than a hundred years
3 Before we were her people. She was ours
4 In Massachusetts, in Virginia,

5 But we were England’s, still colonials,

6 Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
7 Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
6 Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
American land
7 Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
England
8 Something we were withholding made us weak
9 Until we found out that it was ourselves
10 We were withholding from our land of living,
11 And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
12 Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
13 (The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
14 To the land vaguely realizing westward,
15 But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
16 Such as she was, such as she would become.
STYLE
Rhyme-Rhythm-Meter
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
The land was ours be-fore we were the land’s.
land’s

Blank verse: Unrhymed iambic pentameter

The land was ours be-fore we were the land’s.

land’s
“The land was ours
before we were the
lands”
From “The Gift Outright”
Maya Angelou reading “On the Pulse of Morning"
at the 1st inauguration of Bill Clinton.
January 20, 1993
Miller Williams reading “Of History and Hope”
at the second inauguration of President Bill Clinton
on January 20, 1997.
Elizabeth Alexander reading "Praise Song for the Day«
at Barack Obama’s inauguration
January 20, 2009
Amanda Gorman reading «The Hill We Climb»
at Joe Biden’s inauguration
January 20, 2021
January 6, 2021 January 20, 2021
The siege of the US Capitol Presidential Inauguration
Amanda Gorman reading «The Hill We Climb»

“We will not march back to what was.

We move to what shall be,
a country that is bruised, but whole.
Benevolent, but bold. Fierce and free.”
When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade.
We've braved the belly of the beast,
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace,
and the norms and notions
of what just is
isn't always just-ice.
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we've weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn't broken,
but simply unfinished.
We the successors of a country and a time
where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one.
And yes we are far from polished.
Far from pristine.
But that doesn't mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge a union with purpose,
to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man.
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us,
but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another.
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true,
that even as we grieved, we grew,
that even as we hurt, we hoped,
that even as we tired, we tried,
that we'll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat,
but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
and no one shall make them afraid.
If we're to live up to our own time,
then victory won't lie in the blade.
But in all the bridges we've made,
that is the promise to glade,
the hill we climb.
If only we dare.
It's because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it's the past we step into
and how we repair it.
We've seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it.
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth,
in this faith we trust.
For while we have our eyes on the future,
history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption
we feared at its inception.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter.
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert,
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was,
but move to what shall be.
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free.
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation,
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain,
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy,
and change our children's birthright.
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with.
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west.
We will rise from the windswept northeast,


where our forefathers first realized revolution.

We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states.
We will rise from the sunbaked south.
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover.
And every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful.
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid,
the new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we're brave enough to see it.
If only we're brave enough to be it.
“In three words I can sum everything I’ve learned
about life: it goes on.”
 FORM CONTENT

“the sound” A poem “begins in deight

“the gold in the ore” and ends in wisdom.”
“We enjoy the straight A poem is “a momentary
crookedness of a good stay against confusion.”
walking stick.”
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
1 2 3 4

A
A
B B
A B
C C
B C
D D
C D
D
D
 “Scholars and artists…are often annoyed at the puzzle of
where they differ. Both work from knowledge, but I suspect they
differ most importantly in the way their knowledge is come by.
Scholars get theirs with conscientious thoroughness along projected
lines of logic; poets theirs cavalierly* and as it happens in and out of
books. They stick to nothing deliberately, but let what will stick to
them like burrs where they walk in the fields…”
“The Figure a Poem Makes”
Last paragraph

* Cavalierly: indifferently, carelessly, thoughtlessly

 Nature poems

 Narrative poems

 Poems of commentary and contemplation

Description of a natural scene or event

Contrast between
“outer and inner weather”
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
As ice storms do.
Theme:
different aspects of the life of country people

Example:
“The Death of the Hired Man’’
Theme: philosophical issues
various aspects of human life

Ex.: “The Road not Taken’’

“Fire and Ice’’
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice. Ateş ile Buz
Çev. Suhi Aytimur, İyi Şeyler Yay., 1994
 Content: Rural/regional (landscape, folklore and
speech of New England)
 Form: Conventional (traditional teckniques-
rhyme, meter)
The Wood-Pile
1 Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,
2 I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.
3 No, I will go on farther—and we shall see.'
4 The hard snow held me, save where now and then
5 One foot went through. The view was all in lines
6 Straight up and down of tall slim trees
7 Too much alike to mark or name a place by
8 So as to say for certain I was here
9 Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
10 A small bird flew before me. He was careful
11 To put a tree between us when he lighted,
12 And say no word to tell me who he was
13 Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
14 He thought that I was after him for a feather—
15 The white one in his tail; like one who takes
16 Everything said as personal to himself.
17 One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
18 And then there was a pile of wood for which
19 I forgot him and let his little fear
20 Carry him off the way I might have gone,
21 Without so much as wishing him good-night.
22 He went behind it to make his last stand.
23 It was a cord of maple, cut and split
24 And piled—and measured, four by four by eight.
25 And not another like it could I see.
26 No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
27 And it was older sure than this year's cutting,
28 Or even last year's or the year's before.
29 The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
30 And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
31 Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
32 What held it though on one side was a tree
33 Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
34 These latter about to fall. I thought that only
35 Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
36 Could so forget his handiwork on which
37 He spent himself, the labor of his ax,
38 And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
39 To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
40 With the slow smokeless burning of decay.
1 Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,
2 I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.
3 No, I will go on farther—and we shall see.'
4 The hard snow held me, save* where now and then
5 One foot went through. The view was all in lines
6 Straight up and down of tall slim trees
7 Too much alike to mark or name a place by
8 So as to say for certain I was here
9 Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
*save=except
10 A small bird flew before me. He was careful
11 To put a tree between us when he lighted,
12 And say no word to tell me who he was
13 Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
10 A small bird flew before me. He (bird) was careful
11 To put a tree between us when he (bird) lighted,
12 And say no word to tell me (speaker) who he (bird) was
13 Who (speaker) was so foolish as to think what he (bird) thought.
14 He thought that I was after him for a feather—
15 The white one in his tail; like one who takes
16 Everything said as personal to himself.
17 One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.

“With good humor, but somewhat patronizingly and, ironically, very blind to the way the bird
would see such a fearful situation, the speaker gently mocks it for being too self-centered, for
thinking that the whole world would be interested in its feathers.

The irony is that it is the man who is thinking these thoughts who deems the bird paranoid for
thinking about him so much. Part of the beauty of the understated psychology in Frost’s work
is that it allows his poems to be vain while thinking about vanity, but even in their vanity they
still fit into the vast natural world.”
(Mary K. Ruby, Poetry for Students, vol.6)
18 And then there was a pile of wood for which
19 I forgot him and let his little fear
20 Carry him off the way I might have gone,
21 Without so much as wishing him good-night.
22 He went behind it to make his last stand.

“Here again the little bird plays a comic foil to the narrator; it prepares for some
mortal confrontation while the man has moved on in his thoughts and forgotten
about it. While the bird braces itself, the man points out, in line 21, that their
rivalry was all a game in his mind—that he would have wished the bird a good
night if he had not been thinking about the pile of wood.”
Mary K. Ruby, Poetry for Students, vol.6
23 It was a cord of maple, cut and split
24 And piled—and measured, four by four by eight.
25 And not another like it could I see.
26 No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
27 And it was older sure than this year's cutting,
28 Or even last year's or the year's before.
29 The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
30 And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
31 Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
32 What held it though on one side was a tree
33 Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
34 These latter about to fall. I thought that only
35 Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
36 Could so forget his handiwork on which
37 He spent himself, the labor of his ax,
38 And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
39 To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
40 With the slow smokeless burning of decay.
32 What held it though on one side was a tree
33 Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
prop
34 These latter about to fall. I thought that only
35 Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
36 Could so forget his handiwork on which
37 He spent himself, the labor of his ax,
38 And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
39 To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
40 With the slow smokeless burning of decay.
“In one sense, the conclusion seems a bit optimistic: after all, why assume that
he is “turning to fresh tasks” when there could be more ominous reasons for his
failure to return to the site?
On the other hand, this assumption fits in perfectly with the rest of the poem,
ascribing to the stranger the curiosity and lack of concentration that have already
been seen in both the speaker and the bird.
In the end, the effort is not presented as having been wasted at all, since the
decaying wood is expending its energy back into the frozen swamp—into the
tree at whose base it sits. Thus, the axeman’s effort does not result in personal
gain, but it benefits nature.”
Mary K. Ruby, Poetry for Students, vol.6
 Themes
Cycle of life

Nature
 Opening of poem End of poem
«I was just far from home.» (9) Nature as home

The hard snow held me, save where now and «Clematis/Had wound strings round and round
then/One foot went through. (4-5) it like a bundle.» (30-31)

«tall
slim trees/ Too much alike to mark or «a useful fireplace/To warm the frozen swamp
name a place» (6-7) as best it could» (38-39)

«Hethought that I was after him for a feather

—» (14)
1 Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,
2 I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.
 Criticism
“The Wood-Pile” is set in winter and deals with the narration of a mind as it goes
through the process of decision and indecision. Frost sees that the processes of the
mind are a binary system where even the slightest choice or determination is
weighed and balanced. “I will turn back from here. / No, I will go on farther,” is
suggestive not of hesitancy but of understanding.

The persona is on a journey not simply through the woods but through his own
epistemology. The journey itself, even the insignificant act of walking through the
woods on “hard snow” that “held me,” is a metaphor for the discovery of the
unexpected and the ways in which that discovery is comprehended.

Nature, Frosts suggests, is not a binary system of either/or, but an endless cycle of life and
death. The conflict between man and nature that recurs so often in Frost’s poetry is really
the battle between the human desire for purpose, resolution, and enduring, life-sustaining
poetic justice and nature’s own agenda of cyclical life, death, and decay. “The Wood-Pile,”
therefore, is a study in the relationship between art and nature.
Bruce Meyer, “The Wood Pile”, Poetry for Students, 1999.
David Kelly argues that the core of Frost’s appeal is his ability to equally respect
both sides of an issue: in the case of “The Wood-Pile,” this means recognizing both
the desire to have more leisure time and the fear of being too free.

One of the most touching, truly human characters in Frost’s works must be the
speaker of “The Wood-Pile,” a person who is so uncomfortable about the
consolations of philosophy that he can immerse himself in a rich situation of fear,
nature, suspicion, rebirth, futility, intrusion, and harmony, and walk away envious
of that unknown someone else who was able to leave these rampant ideas and
focus on something else. This is a pensive man who, when he sees a little bird
flitting about in the forest, imagines a whole drama about the bird’s wants and
fears; a man who knows the significance of mentioning the contrast between a
manmade prop and a still-living tree; a man who has time to walk in the woods.
David Kelly, “The Wood Pile”, Poetry for Students, 1999.
The Berlin Wall
 Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
 That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
 And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
 And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
 The work of hunters is another thing:
 I have come after them and made repair
 Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
 But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
 To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
 No one has seen them made or heard them made,
 But at spring mending-time we find them there.
 I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
 And on a day we meet to walk the line
 And set the wall between us once again.
 We keep the wall between us as we go.
 To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
 And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
 We have to use a spell to make them balance:
 ‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
 We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
 Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
 One on a side. It comes to little more:
 There where it is we do not need the wall:
 He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
 My apple trees will never get across
 And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
 He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
 Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
 If I could put a notion in his head:
 ‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
 Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
 Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
 What I was walling in or walling out,
 And to whom I was like to give offense.
 Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
 That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
 But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
 He said it for himself. I see him there
 Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
 In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
 He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
 Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
 He will not go behind his father's saying,
 And he likes having thought of it so well
 He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
1) Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

Something ?
3 And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
4 And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
5 The work of hunters is another thing:
6 I have come after them and made repair
7 Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
8 But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
9 To please the yelping dogs.
10 The gaps I mean,
11 No one has seen them made or heard them made,
12 But at spring mending-time we find them there.
13 I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
14 And on a day we meet to walk the line
15 And set the wall between us once again.
16 We keep the wall between us as we go.
17 To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
18 And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

19 We have to use a spell to make them balance:

20 'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
21 We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
22 Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
23 One on a side. It comes to little more:
24 There where it is we do not need the wall:
25 He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
26 My apple trees will never get across
27 And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

28 He only says, 'Good fences make good

neighbors'.
29 Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
30 If I could put a notion in his head:
31 'Why do they make good neighbors?Isn't it
32 Where there are cows?But here there are no cows.
33 Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
34 What I was walling in or walling out,
35 And to whom I was like to give offence.
36 Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
37 That wants it down.'
37 I could say 'Elves' to him,
38 But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
39 He said it for himself.
 I see him there
40 Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
41 In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
42 He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
43 Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
44 He will not go behind his father's saying,
45 And he likes having thought of it so well
46 He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
 “an old-stone savage”
“Something there is that
does’t love a wall” “moves in darkness”

“Good fences make good

neighbors.”
Who repairs the wall damaged by hunters?
5 The work of hunters is another thing:
6 I have come after them and made repair
7 Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
Who announces the mending time?
13 I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
14 And on a day we meet to walk the line
15 And set the wall between us once again.
“Mending Wall”
For the speaker: For the neighbor:

“Outdoor game” A job

(imaginative approach) (utilitarian approach)

“I wonder He cannot
if I could put a notion in his head” “go beyond his father’s saying”
 Terminalia: a festival in honour of the god Terminus, who
presided over boundaries. His statue was merely a stone or post stuck in
the ground to distinguish between properties. On the festival the two
owners of adjacent property crowned the statue with garlands and raised a
rude altar, on which they offered up some corn, honeycombs, and wine,
and sacrificed a lamb or a sucking pig. They concluded with singing the
praises of the god.
The festival of the Terminalia was celebrated on 23 February (last
day of the old Roman year, whence its name).
A Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Antiquities
When President John F. Kennedy inspected the
Berlin Wall, he quoted the first line of Frost’s
poem “Mending Wall’’
Poetry provides the one permissible way of
saying one thing and meaning another. People
say: ‘’Why don’t you say what you mean?’’ We
here do that, we being all of us too much poets.
We like to talk in parables and in hints and
indirections – whether from difference or some
other instinct.

[Link] “Education by Poetry’’

 It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route,
and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before
my feet wore a path from my door to the pondside, and though it is five or
six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others
may have fallen into it and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the
earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men: and so with the paths which
the mind travels.

How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep
the ruts* of tradition and conformity!

*Rut: a long deep track made by the repeated passage of the wheels of vehicles.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
The road of tradition and conformity:

“worn”
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;

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.
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;

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.
“the other” road the alternative road

“grassy and wanted wear” more difficult

“the less travelled by” more provocative,

more challenging
 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.
 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.
 I shall be telling this with a sigh
(sign of relief)
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.
(positive difference)
 the road of non-comformity
The road taken by the traveller
the road of individuality

The road not taken The road of conformity

The road taken by the crowd
"You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky
poem - very tricky.“

[Link]
"The Road Not Taken" is perhaps the most famous
example of Frost’s own claims to conscious irony
and "the best example in all of American poetry
of a wolf in sheep's clothing." ([Link])
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;

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
“The Road Not Taken”
To take a road: To choose a road:
A less conscious, impulsive A conscious,
act deliberate act
“The poem suggests that our choices are
irrational and aesthetic.”

R. Faggen
 “We are too much in the middle of things, Frost seems to be
saying, ever to understand when we are truly "acting" and
"deciding" and when we are merely reacting...

Our paths unfold themselves to us as we go. We realize our

destination only when we arrive at it, though all along we were
driven toward it by purposes we may rightly claim, in retrospect,
as our own.”
(Mark Richardson)
“Frost, the wily ironist, implies the following:
‘When I am old, like all old men, I shall make a myth of my life.
I shall pretend, as we all do, that I took the less traveled road.
But I shall be lying.’

Frost wants the reader to know that what he will be saying, that he
took the road less traveled, is a fraudulent position, hence the sigh.”
Jay Parini
Robert Frost – Fireside Poets

The power of the last stanza within the Fireside tradition of analogical
landscape assures Frost his popular audience, while for those who get
his game -- some member, say, of a different audience, versed in the
avant-garde little magazines and in the treacheries of irony and the
impulse of the individual talent trying, - for that reader, this poem
tells a different tale: that our life-shaping choices are irrational, that
we are fundamentally out of control. This is the fabled "wisdom" of
Frost, which he hides in a moralizing statement that asserts the
consoling contrary of what he knows.
[Link]
Poetry: “a momentary stay against confusion”
For Once then Something

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs

Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
My myself in the summer heaven, godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths-and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
The Wood Pile”
Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,
I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.
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
 Poetry and Walking

- The walk as an externalized form of an inner search

- The walk as a metaphor for the process of poetic compositio

- Rhythm of a walk/poem
Whatever this rhythm is, «lumbering, clipped, wavering,
tripping, mechanical, dance-like, awkward, staggering, or
slow, it is nonreproducible and nonlogical because the
motion occurs in the body of the walker and the body of
the words»
Whose woods these are I think I know.
Does the human being posess the woods (nature)?

OR

Does the wood (nature) posess the human being?

I think I know.

I think I know.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
 Nature  Culture
 Wilderness  Civilization
 Subconscious  Conscious
 Irrational  Rational
 Freedom  Responsibility
 Individual  Society
Stanza 1
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
Stanza 4
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
“The poem expresses a desire for self-
annihilation… for some furtive impulse toward
extinction."
[Link]
 Conflict between
subjective (I) – objective (woods)
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.

Good fences make good neighbors.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
woods (4 times) ------ I (5 times)
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.

Good fences make good neighbors.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.

Good fences make good neighbors.

Good fences make good neighbors.
woods (4 times) ------ I (5 times)
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
Does the horse shake his harness to ask a question or does
the traveller project his own thoughts to the horse?
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
Social responsibilities turn out to be stronger than the call
of nature.

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.
Metaphorical reference to the shortness of life.
“There is in the end the uncertainty in choosing
between his death impulse
and his desire to continue on the road of life.“

(Clint Stevens)
“The woods are lolely”:
seductivesmess of the woods
BUT
“ I have promises to keep”:
The pull of social responsibilities

Does th epoem report any attempt to move/ to go back to the village?

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Content: Uncertainty
Form: ?
1 aaba
2 bbcb
3 ccdc
4 dddd
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
The woods are love- ly, dark and deep.
But I have pro- mi- ses to keep,
And miles to go be fore I sleep,
And miles to go be fore I sleep.
CONTENT: FORM:

UNCERTAINTY FIRMNESS ?
Whose woods these are I think I know

Whose woods these are I think I know

 In his last appearance in 1962 at the Ford
Forum in Boston Frost told his audience that
the thing which had given him most pleasure
in composing the poem was the effortless
sound of that couplet about the horse and what
it does when stopped by the woods: "He gives
his harness bells a shake / To ask if there is
some mistake."
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.
“So, the harsh gutturals and abrupt movement of lines like, 'He gives
his harness bells a shake…’ give verbal shape to the matter-of-fact
attitude attributed to the horse, just as the soothing sibilants and
gently rocking motion of the lines that follow offer a tonal
equivalent of the strange, seductive world into which the narrator is
tempted to move.”
Richard Gray
“ The words of the poem become actors in the drama.”

Richard Gray
KAR YAĞARKEN ORMANA

Bu koruluklar kimin, sanırım biliyorum

Ama köyde oturuyor sahibi bu koruların;
Durup seyrettiğimi görmeyecek burada
Nasıl bütün ormanı kapladığını karın.

Atım da şaşrmış olmalı durmama

Bir çiftlik bile yokken yakında,
Arasında donmuş gölle koruların
Tılın bu en karanlık akşamında.

Şöyle bir sarsıyor başıyla dizginlerini

Acaba yanıldım mı diye.
Bunun dışında duyulan tek ses
Esen yelle yağan kar ince ince.

Korular çok güzel, karanlık derin,

Ama verilmiş sözüm var benim,
Ve uyumadan önce millerce yol gideceğim,
Ve uyumadan önce millerce yol gideceğim.

Cev. Cevat Çapan

KAR YAĞARKEN ORMANA

Bu koruluklar kimin, sanırım biliyorum

Ama köyde oturuyor sahibi bu koruların;
Durup seyrettiğimi görmeyecek burada
Nasıl bütün ormanı kapladığını karın.

Atım da şaşrmış olmalı durmama

Bir çiftlik bile yokken yakında,
Arasında donmuş gölle koruların
Yılın bu en karanlık akşamında.

Şöyle bir sarsıyor başıyla dizginlerini

Acaba yanıldım mı diye.
Bunun dışında duyulan tek ses
Esen yelle yağan kar ince ince.

Korular çok güzel, karanlık derin,

Ama verilmiş sözüm var benim,
Ve uyumadan önce millerce yol gideceğim,
Ve uyumadan önce millerce yol gideceğim.
“Stopping by Woods…”
is a poem about a traveller who contemplates …

to contemplate = muse
meditate
ponder
reflect
think over
 Write down an essay applying the terms homo
faber and homo ludens to «Mending Wall»

 Homo Faber (yapan, eden insan)

 Homo Ludens (oyun oynayan insan)
 Write down an essay discussing the conflict between nature and
culture in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

Write down an essay discussing “Stopping by Woods on a

Snowy Evening” in the light of the following quotation: “ The
words of the poem become actors in the drama.” (Richard
Gray).

Write down an essay discussing the relationship between form

and content in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Write down an essay discussing the usage of the words
“wall” and “fence” in “Mending Wall.”

Write down an essay discussing how [Link] treats the

concept of “wall” in “Mending Wall.”

Discuss the significance of the following lines taking

into account the whole of the poem:
“I took the less travelled one”.
 Carl Sandburg

 «Chicago»
 «Cool Toombs»
 «Fog»
 «Grass»
 Topic for oral presentation (5 min.)
for the next lecture:
Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and burial ceremony
(The presentation will serve as a historical background
for Carl Sandburg’s «Cool Toombs»)

Volunteers can consult me at the end of the lecture or

write to [Link]@[Link]