Robert Frost

“The Need of Being Versed in Country Things”
“The Road not Taken”

In order to understand Frost’s poetry and what he stood for in the United States it is imperative to at least read an abbreviated biography of his life (There is a great concise one on about.com). Frost although a humorous man was deeply troubled throughout his life. While reading his biography I felt as if he was someone who desperately wanted to fit in, to be a normal part of society, but something was continually holding him back. Perhaps it was his deep yearning to characterize the world around him and separate the good from the bad, the things that were supposed to be or made sense from the things that weren’t or didn’t. This is what I feel gave him the classification of a modernist poet. In all of his searching for the lines that separated things he found none in the end. There was no good or evil only a portrait of humanity and he did his best job to depict that. What I enjoy most about Frost’s poetry and what makes him so readable by so many different groups is his duality. You don’t have to be a certain age to gain something from reading his poetry. I remember reading in eighth grade “The Road not Taken” and receiving what I thought was a great understand of it at that time. Now, my grasp and understanding of the picture painted in that poem is totally different. While there are many poets who attribute this characteristic into their poetry in my opinion Frost does it by far the best. In his poem “The Need of Being Versed in Country Things” we also see this same duality or levels of understanding. My understanding of the poem is that it was a story of a house that had burnt to the ground and an overall dreary scene was described until the birds came into the poem suggesting the kind of moral through their unaffected view that life continues on either way and things continue to grow such as the “Lilacs” and the “old elm” in spite of the past fire. Also there was a kind of theme that “life is sad at times, but the sun will rise again tomorrow” you could draw that from the bird’s appearing to weep at the end. On further reading of the poem I found what I feel is a darker meaning. I also fell that the last two lines show that Frost perhaps held a deterministic view of nature. I take the word country he uses at the end to be interchangeable with nature or the natural way of the universe (focusing on nature). I feel that he is trying to discredit the thoughts that people had that nature or its inhabitants cared about human misfortune. The same nature that stirred the fire also bloomed the lilac’s and the old elm. This is the connection I feel he was trying to draw. Nature does not exist for our usage and enjoyment we exist because nature has allowed it.