Robert Frost And Emily Dickinson Essays - American Christians

Robert Frost And Emily Dickinson There are two poets that make up a unique American poetic voice, Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson. Regardless of their different lifes and poetic style, they still had a great impact on American poetry. Robert Frost Robert Frost led a productive life that spanned 89 years. Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, but never earned a formal degree. Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first professional poem, The Butterfly, was published on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent. In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became a major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire farm failed, and it was abroad that Frost met and was influenced by such contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. While in England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped to promote and publish his work. By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length collections, A Boy's Will and North of Boston, and his reputation was established. By the nineteen-twenties, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and with each new book--including New Hampshire (1923), A Further Range (1936), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing (1962)--his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes) increased. Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died on January 29, 1963, in Boston. Frost's most famous poem, ?The Road Not Taken, has left its readers with many different interpretations. It is one's past, present and the attitude with which he looks upon his future that determines the shade of the light that he will see the poem in. This poem clearly demonstrates Frost's belief that it is the road that one chooses that makes him the man who he is. And sorry I could not travel both... It is always difficult to make a decision because it is impossible not to wonder about the opportunity cost, what will be missed out on. In an attempt to make a decision, the traveler looks down one as far as I could. The road that will be chosen leads to the unknown, as does any choice in life. It is the way that he chooses here that sets him off on his journey and decides where he is going. Then took the other, just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim. What made it have the better claim is that it was grassland wanted wear. The fact that the traveler took this path over the more popular, secure one indicates the type of personality he (maybe Frost) has, one that does not want to necessarily follow the crowd but do more of what has never been done, what is new and different. This is his common sense speaking and acknowledging that what he chooses now will affect every other choice he makes afterward. He realizes that at the end of his life, somewhere ages and ages hence, he will have regrets about having never gone back and traveling down the roads he did not take. Yet he remains proud of his decision and he recognizes that it was this path that he chose that made him turn out the way and he did and live his life the way in which he lived. I took the road less traveled by and that had made all the difference. Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley but severe homesickness led her to return home after one year. In the years that followed, she seldom left her house and visitors were scarce. The people with whom she did come in contact, however, had an intense impact on her thoughts and poetry. She was particularly