Robert Frost Criticism

Robert Frost was a successful American poet during the modernism era. Who is known for his works such as “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” and “The Road Not Taken.”

Frost writing is placed mostly in the modernism time period but holds many 19th century tendencies. Which makes his writing difficult to place. The modernist time period is characterised as breaking traditional views of literature. While the 19th century time period refers to literature written with similar values and traditions of 19th century culture. Frost poetry while concerned modernistic “ shows no marked departure from the poetic practices of the 19th century (Costello 4).” His writing took many devices found in romantic poetry and made them new. Critics often

The three we will be focusing on are John T. Ogilvie, Guy Rotella, and Reuben A.Brower. Specifically their critics over the poem “Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening”. John T. Ogilvie describes Frost poem as “ What appears to be “simple” is shown to not be not really simple, what appears to be innocent, not really innocent (5).” Ogilvie says that the “scene of desolate woods, effacing snow, and black night (5)” adds to the mood of “dangerous isolation and menacing death (5).” Another critic was Guy Rotella. He describes the poem as an event “balancing, unbalancing, rebalancing, these acts are the life of the poem, of the poet making and the reader taking it (5).” He views the poem as an ongoing event yet to meet its close. The final critic is Ruben A. Brower. He views the poem as “ brief in actual time , but with the deceptive length of a dream (5).” He talks about how the reader is drawn into the poem and the “silence and sleep (5)”it 's lines possess. He states that the poem shows “both the process and effect as the poet-traveler composes himself for sleep (5).” All these critics show many differencing points of view over the poem “stopping by the woods on a snowy