Robert Frost and Bob Dylan
Thinking Activity
This blog is a thinking activity assigned by Megha Ma'an visitor faculty of Department of English M.K.B.U. In this blog I am going to write about Robert Frost's one of the most famous poem 'Birches'.
About Robert Frost
Robert Frost was considered as one of the most popular poets of the twentieth century. He was born in San Francisco, California on Mar 26, 1874. He is a well known modern poet. He is generally regarded as a poet, teacher, and a man of wisdom. Many Americans recognize his name, the titles of and lines from his best-known poems and even his face and the sound of his voice. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize four times.
He had much knowledge of literature, history, science and philosophy. Hence he can be termed as classicist of very high order. Frost never describes the situations and conditions of life of modern society, and never he writes about political and economic problems of his age. Most of works were highly influenced or inspired by Rural life in New England. He does not aloof himself from contemporary society. He knows most things about his society but he never wrote about that particular political and social things in his writing. He has penetrated from social actions to intellectual problems of his age.
He was a poet who spoke with rhyme and meter of all things natural, and in so doing plumbed the depths of emotions of people in all walks of life.
Louis Untermeyer best describes Frost's work as -
"poetry that sings and poetry that talks ... his poems are people talking"
Robert Frost is one of few poets in English Literature that shall never become outdated because poetry is an echo of every sensitive man's experiences and his limitations.
At last we said that Frost does not deal with the type of themes which we come across in T.S.Eliot, but that does not mean that he is any the less modern. He has his unique style of writing.
Frost’s attachment with New England and rural life generally cause a misinterpretation of his themes. That's why a number of critics think that Frost never wanted to be characterized by topical labels. He ignores many of the overwhelming subjects of the twentieth century, to be specific the two world wars and the problems of urbanization and mechanization.
The poem 'Birches'
"Birches" is a poem by American poet Robert Frost. This poem first published in the August, 1915 issue of The Atlantic Monthly together with "The Road Not Taken" and "The Sound of Trees" as "A Group of Poems". It was included in Frost's third collection of poetry Mountain Interval, which was published in 1916. Consisting of 59 lines, it is one of Robert Frost's most anthologized poems. He wrote this poem in blank verse. Along with other poems that deal with rural landscape and wildlife, it shows Frost as a nature poet.
As a boy, the poet was much interested in climbing birch trees, swinging from the tops, till the supple branches bent down to the ground. In this poem he expresses his desire to be swinger of birches at least once in his present time, but he didn't mean that he wanted to escape from his life. The swinging of birches is used as a distraction, a passtime to busy oneself in order to escape the realities and hardships of the adult world.
“Birches” Summary
This poem opens with the sight of curiously bent birches trees. When the poet sees birches bending to left and right in the backdrop of “straighter and darker ” trees, he thought that it is the work of some country boy who must’ve indulged in swinging them. However, he is fully aware that it cannot be the case as the birches have been permanently bent. He knows it isn’t the work of a harmless boy. It’s the ice storms. Harsh, cold and ruthless. The boy and the ice storm both are explanations for the truth behind the state of the bent birches. One is the objective, fact based explanation which states that which is. The other is a subjective explanation based on fantasy which creates a possibility of that which can be.
The poem now switches to the second person as the speaker addresses the reader “you”. While referring to the birches to delve into the human condition, we are told that some circumstances merely swing them and others them down forever.
Sometimes, when the poet’s adult life is ravaged by some harsh truths about the real world the ice-storms, he prefers the truths to be like a birch tree that might be bent by some boy – a boy who was too far from the town to learn baseball and whose only play was what he found. This was how the poet persona supposedly spent his childhood – subduing his father’s trees, climbing them and swinging from them to reach the ground.
The nostalgia of childhood provides a brief escape to the speaker from the rigors of adult life. The manner in which he used to climb the tree is vividly captured in these lines. After learning to climb carefully with the same pains as one uses “to fill the cup up to the brim, and even above the brim”, he’d fling himself “kicking his way down through the air to the ground” a lot like building one’s life carefully around a certain truth only to fling oneself clear off it. There’s a limit to what a cup can hold and there’s a limit to which the boy can climb the tree. He must come down someday.
Sometimes the speaker can’t help but yearn to escape from adult life. He wishes to be the boy again who used to spend his leisure time with the birches.
The poet makes it clear that neither is he an escapist nor is he espousing escapism to get away from the rigors of life which demands duty, entrusts responsibility and exploits vulnerability. Rather, what he thirsts for is a brief respite from the harsh realities of existence. As he explicitly states :
“Earth’s the right place for love
I don’t know where it’s likely to get better."
Theme
The central theme of Birches is that the poet dreams of becoming a swinger of birches once again in his life as he was during his boyhood. As the poet is weary of considerations that his life involves, he expresses his desire to be a swinger of birches at least for the present time, but it does not mean that he wishes to escape from his life on earth. It is not the desire of escape that forms the central theme of the poem, but the love of the earth.
Figures of speech
The poem is very stylistically rich. The use of figurative language allows the poem to be more enjoyable, as well as it acts as an aid to support the theme of reminiscing adolescence and the importance of balance
Frost uses simile, contrast, repetition, personification, onomatopoeia, symbolism, imagery, and metaphors.
Onomatopoeia: "...They click upon themselves" - The sharp sound of the click of the branches contrasts the soft delicate images that he remembers of his childhood
Simile: "....trailing their leaves on the ground/Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair/Before them over their heads to dry in the sun"
Contrast: "And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk" . There is also a general contrast of reality vs imagination which is an active theme in "Birches"
Repetition: Frost repeats "birches bend,," boy's swinging "bends them" "swinger of birches" - represents the significance of the man imagining his childhood instead of believing reality
Personification: "trailing their leaves on the ground" (imagery to describe tree)
The poem is a blank verse that consists of 10 syllables per line, no rhyme, five iambs (metrical feet that have two syllables; one unstressed followed by stressed)
It's a lyric poem because the Frost shares his emotions about his childhood
Frost has a descriptive style using vivid imagery and figurative language to appeal to the readers' senses.
No comments:
Post a Comment