Autobiographical Nature in the Writings of Five Well Known Poets

Among the five authors that I have chosen they all relate themselves to the material that they write. The authors that I have chosen are, the poets, Robert Frost and Robinson Jeffers, the prose writers, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Willa Cather, and the dramatist, Eugene O’Neil. In all of their writings they have an autobiographical nature that tells the reader about the authors own life. Without the aspects of these authors’ lives their writing could differ.

This aspect of revealing ones own life through writing can be seen in Robert Frost’s poems not because he portrays his own life, but quite the opposite. It is commonly known that Robert Frost life was filled with much depression. Because of this, Robert Frost tends to dwell on the surreal beauty of nature in life. It is seen in his poems such as “The Pasture” that Robert Frost puts what has fulfilled his life in his writing.

Like these other authors, Robinson Jeffers also involves his life in his poetry. Throughout his life Jeffers religious intent shows him to be a pantheist whose God is the evolving universe. In his poem “Credo” he talks about how nothing is real except but what we make it. The idea that God is in our minds, and he creates the images that makes things real. The religious background of his life affected him to write the poems of the permanence of God.

Similar to Jeffers deep appreciate of God, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman has a profound value for the culture of rural New England. In her story “The New England Nun” she explores a women’s enjoyment in her life, which gave them control over their lives. The woman shows strength and endurance in the story. Rural New England also possessed this in their culture and economy. Her reflective importance for the culture of rural New England has brought her own life into the fictional story “The New England Nun.”

Comparable to the lifelong subjects the authors used from their own experience, Willa Cather evoked her thoughts of her own childhood to her writing as well. As a child she was seen as a tomboy and was not seen as a conventional girl. She used all the entanglements of being an outcast to generate energy into her writing. Because she was seen as not being an elegant girl of her time, she wrote the story “Coming, Aphrodite!” to show the rising of civilizations in history.