File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1997/phillitcrit.9711, message 42


From: Saicho-AT-aol.com
Date: Sun, 2 Nov 1997 14:39:41 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: PLC: On Frost



While it is a serious mistake to treat Frost as superficial poet, I feel it
is also a mistake to treat his poetry as a field of vast possibilities --
there are only a few, and he makes them rather clear, sometimes subtly and
sometimes no so subtle.  When he talks about God, he talks about God, as in
his "Sitting by a Bush in Broad Sunlight." In  "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening" I doubt very much if this poem would have the fame and punch without
the last verse -- until that point the poem is a quaint imagistic picture. 

I cannot believe that the woods are a metaphor for the attraction of death,
but rather the attraction for solitude, mystery and perhaps inactivity which
the poet is drawn to, as we all are from time to time.  I receive his meaning
with ease and comfort -- it sinks in like a melody and I am not driven to
explication.

This is to be contrasted with, say, the Metaphysical Poets.  I bring them up
because I took a course in them, years ago and discovered that to get a good
grade all one had to do was to ferret out every conceivable reference and
allusion -- especially those having to do with mythology, sex, politics,
death, God, the scriptures, and the tears of Christ.  Frost is "deep" without
being laboriously so. It is not surprising that Frost said his poetry is
about what it seems to be about.

Saicho



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