Robert Frost wrote some of the finest verse of our time. He created his own extraordinarily flat, "unpoetic" variant of the conversational idiom which has become the medium of most modern poetry. He restricted himself to the homeliest diction, to words largely of one or two syllables, a remarkable feat. And he countered this simplicity with a highly sophisticated rhetoric, with the devious twistings of the poem's development, with the irony of simple word and subtle thought. His diction was just right for the rural scene he chose in the face of the intimidating international subjects of [T. S.] Eliot and Pound, and just right, too, for its simple particulars. He was no doubt our master of the realistic particular. Things magnified at his touch; they seemed to live. His themes were familiar to most, and appealed—though in widely varying degrees—to everyone: the exhaustion of living, the sense of imminent danger …, personal isolation, the need for community, etc. Frost is so good, so much pleasure to read that you wonder why he needs to be defended so often…. Is there some really critical defect in him, one that might explain why Frost never had the passionate following Eliot had? Why didn't Frost so affect us, so transform us that we had no choice but to be his?
What I want to do is to develop an aspect of Frost's poems which I feel represents such a defect…. My principal argument is that Frost never risked his life, his whole being; he was never really lost, like the Eliot of The Waste Land. He remained in control, in possession of himself. He did this by keeping himself from the deepest experiences, the kind you stake your life on. And this is reflected in various ways, all of which point to a central division in Frost's experience, in himself. He has been represented, by himself as well as by others, as one able to integrate his life…. But when we read his poetry we encounter division of several kinds.
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