Robert Frost's Directive

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Robert Frost's "Directive"

The speaker of "Directive" is the Robert Frost we know well. He gives us a scene that he has looked at in a way no one else does and seen things that no one else sees. The ghost town "made simple by the loss of detail" (2-3) is dazzlingly rich. If, as Frost habitually does, we were to conjure up a fully-fleshed intent behind this simple condition, perhaps we would guess that a scene of scraped land and "forty cellar holes" is more than enough grist for Frost's mill, and anything else would call for poetic fireworks that would overshadow his theme. This poem is an insightful allegory on the Grail symbol, made strange by Frost's characteristic subversive and introverted nature.

Frost offers to be our guide, but warns us that he is a guide "who only has at heart your getting lost"(9). It is as direct an admission as you could ask for, although he usually offers others nearly as unmistakable. For example, in "The Wood-Pile," after announcing that he is "so foolish as to think he knew what" a small bird thinks, he goes on to guess at both the bird's moti...

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