by Anonymous Logician, Copyright January 30, 2007, all rights reserved. 735 views
Thanks for bearing with me in this lengthy literary survey. I hope readers of this blog will find it at least interesting, and maybe even catch some of my passion for literature.
I have one final twentieth-century movement to look at. This movement, perhaps the closest to Frost we've seen so far, comprises the schools of the New Criticism and the New Formalism. The first of these schools was led by poets like the southern agrarian John Crowe Ransom, and the second felt Ransom's influence. Both schools reacted sharply to the prominence of free verse and the break with convention, arguing that a return to traditional meters and rhyme was the only way to continue literary progress. Just as in the fashion industry white is sometimes said to be the new black (or, to use Jay-Z's words, thirty is the new twenty), so for Ransom and others convention was the new innovation. Though Ransom technically was a contemporary, not a successor, of Frost, Ransom's poetic influence extended past Frost's death in 1963 (Ransom himself died eleven years later).
Ransom's work is possibly the closest to Frost's we've covered. Ransom remains very close to traditional rhyme schemes, as in "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter": "For the tireless heart within the little / Lady with rod that made them rise / From their noon apple-dreams and scuttle / Goose-fashion under the skies!" In addition, Ransom's agrarianism and mistrust of monolithic industrialism may make him Frost's kindred rural spirit, like the unseen mower in "The Tuft of Flowers."
Yet as with the other poets we've considered, Frost remains distinct. Two major differences appear when both poets are compared closely. First, Ransom's language emulates the exalted poetic tone of the nineteenth century, while Frost sought to create his own modern, rural voice. Classical allusions, not uncommon in Ransom, are nearly nonexistent in Frost. Second, Ransom cultivated more variety in his rhyme and meter than did Frost. Frost seems to prefer blank verse and basic rhymes; Ransom prefers to alternate lines (ABAB) or follow the interwoven rhyming style of Milton and Donne, as in "Janet Waking" or the sonnet "Piazza Piece."
So it looks like Frost–at first glance a simple homespun poet from New England–has carved his own distinctive niche in American literature. Frost is amiable and accessible; his conversational tone speaks to modern and postmodern Americans where they are. Frost is earthy and concrete, couching his poems in vivid images. His quick wit and ironic sense of humor guard his work from triteness, and his subtle insights into human nature and experience provide ample opportunity for deeper poetic digging.
Frost isn't too proud to learn from those who went before him. Nor does he fail to influence those who followed. Yet despite his similarities with other great American poets, Frost remains resiliently unique, impossible to pin down.
Maybe, as a "swinger of birches," Frost would have it no other way.