Watkins
Michael Watkins
Ms. Sarah Carter
Eng 102
Dec. 6, 2017
The Darkness: Within the poetic works of Robert Frost Robert Frost is regarded as one of the most distinguished American poets in the twentieth century. His work usually realistically describes the rural life in New England in the early twentieth century and conveys complex social and philosophical themes. But his personal life was plagued with grief and loss, which is also reflected in his poems and the dark energy distinguishes Robert Frost’s poems, frequently conveyed in the use of lexical words like dark and its derivatives or synonyms, woods, snow, night, and so on. (Su, Y) Robert Frost, author of “Acquainted with the Night” published in 1928, shares his personal struggle
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(2006). Frost’s ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT. The Explicator , 65(1), 39042. Retrieved from https//search.proquest.com/docview/216781547?accountid=146941. https://biography.com/people/robert-frost-20796091 Garner, D. (1993, Jan 24). Acquainted with the night. Boston Globe Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/403519981?accountid=146941 Gilbert, Roger. "Robert Frost: The Walk as Parable." Poetry Criticism, edited by Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 173, Gale, 2016. Literature Resource Center, proxy.campbell.edu/login?url=http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=nclivecu&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CH1420120652&it=r&asid=ce43321a2e99d7cd8ccbc328976c3726. Mintz, S., & McNeil, S. (2016). Digital History. Retrieved 12/7/2017 from http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu Stern, Fred. “Robert Frost: One Acquainted with the Night.” World & I, vol. 28, no.3, Mar 2013, p. 2 EBSCO/host, proxy.campbell.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pw&AN=87555602&site=pov-live. Su, Yujie. "Dark Energy in Robert Frost's Poems*." Theory and Practice in Language Studies, vol. 6, no. 7, 2016, pp. 1372-1376, ProQuest Central, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1812641272?accountid=146941,
Gerber, Philip L. Robert Frost. Ed. Kenneth Eble. Boston: Twayne Publishers, Inc. 1982. The. 124-125 Lentricchia, Frank.
Selected Poems by Robert Frost, New York: Barnes and Noble, 2001 3.Graham, Judith, ed. Current Biography Yearbook Vol. 1962, New York: The H.W Wilson Company, 1993 4.Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, New York: Penguin Group, 1962 5.Weir, Peter. Dead Poets Society, 1989
Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan et al. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2007. 695-696. Print.
Written by Robert Frost in 1928, “Acquainted with the Night” uses symbolic imagery, metaphors, and the terza rima rhyme scheme to pay homage to Dante. It refers to the style of the “Divine Comedy” and the conflict of religious politics in Italy during that time period.
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words,” Robert Frost once said. As is made fairly obvious by this quote, Frost was an adroit thinker. It seems like he spent much of his life thinking about the little things. He often pondered the meaning and symbolism of things he found in nature. Many readers find Robert Frost’s poems to be straightforward, yet his work contains deeper layers of complexity beneath the surface. His poems are not what they seem to be at first glance. These deeper layers of complexity can be clearly seen in his poems “The Road Not Taken”, “Fire and Ice”, and “Birches”.
Frost’s application of diction in “Acquainted With the Night” expresses the meaning that hard times provides isolation through key words that provide the audience with proof that the speaker is communicating a detached mood. In line 1, “acquainted,” is a vital use of diction to show the meaning. The word acquainted means to know very well. When the speaker is saying he is “acquainted with the night” in line 1, he is indicating that he is familiar with the lonely night. By being “acquainted” with darkness, or the night, in his life, the speaker is illustrating how being in an isolated state of life is not new to him. The meaning of detached feelings because of hardships is revealed
Waggoner, Hyatt H. "A Writer of Poems: The Life and Work of Robert Frost," The Times Literary Supplement. April 16, 1971, 433-34.
- Frost, Robert. “Acquainted With the Night.” Robert Frost: Selected Poems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 58-59
Robert Frost’s story starts on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California. Frost was born to father William Prescott and mother Isabelle Moodie; he also had a younger sister Jeanie. When Robert Frost was 11 years old, his father died of tuberculosis. Shortly after, Frost and his mother and sister, then 2 years old, moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts. In high school he became interested in reading and writing poetry. He enrolled in Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. He also enrolled in Harvard, but he never earned a formal college degree. After college, he had many jobs including being a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first poem, ‘My Butterfly’ was published in the New York Newspaper, The Independent, in November 8, 1894. In 1895, he married his wife Miriam White and she was a major inspiration for his poetry. Then in 1912, they moved to England; it was here he met many contemporary British poets who influenced his writing. He befriended Ezra Pound who helped him promote and publish Frost...
In the poem, “Acquainted with the Night,” Robert Frost gives us many themes that both relate to the author and the readers. Three themes that stand out are isolation, dissatisfaction, and time. And with these the author is showing us the point of the poem and what he hopes for us to learn and understand.
http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/frost/section7.html Thompson, Corey. The "Updike's A&P" ProQuest Research Library 59.4 (2001): 215-216. Web.
He (Robert Frost) then goes on to use the technique of alliteration in (l. 7). Alliteration is the same letter or sound at the beginning of words in a line (mainly consonants). The stopping of the sound of feet to me illustrates that he is wandering and absent minded but then stopped walking and probably focused his thoughts. Even then at this point there is a feeling of loneliness and uneasiness. Robert Frost continues and uses a metaphor which in this particular poem is (ll.12) by referring the moon to “... luminary clock against the sky” . A metaphor is a thing that is symbolic or represents something else. At this point it seemed as if the moon was a sign of hope but that idea quickly dissolved as he ties up the poem with couplet “ Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night.” (ll 13,14). Up until this point everything about this poem is about darkness, sadness and depression.. By the last two lines he was illustrating and stating that there is no right or wrong time to feel the way that I feel or to have gone through the things that I've gone through “depression, sadness, alienation and
Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken”. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7Th Ed. Nina
1. Frost, Robert. Robert Frost’s Poems. Ed. Louis Untermeyer. New York: Washington Square Press, 1968. 194.
Richardson, Mark. The Ordeal of Robert Frost: The Poet and His Poetics. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1997. Print.