Acute Isolation in the Poetry of Robert Frost

Abstract


The period of the first half of the twentieth century was a critical era for a literary figure. The social, economic, and political circumstances put their hands in every corner of life and led to enormous impacts and changes. Such changes were present in the new perspectives that literary figures wanted to follow on one hand, and in the aggressive realities and atrocities which demanded attention on the other hand. In consequence, there were three avenues to be followed by a literary figure: either to advocate the established norms of the literary scene, or set new ones, or make some amendments; that is, to form kind of hybrid between the old and the new. The last avenue was taken by Frost in which he "rejected the revolutionary poetic principle of his contemporaries, choosing instead 'the old-fashioned way to be new'."1
Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963) had a troubled life. He had seen ups and downs which were to leave their touches on his life and work. His father died when he was eleven years old and after twenty years, his Scot mother died of cancer. In 1920, Frost put his younger sister Jeanie to a mental hospital to die nine years later. This state of loss and plight was transferred to his children so "his family life was especially painful."2 He had six children from his wife Elinor White but only two of them (Lesley and Irma) outlived their father. The wife whom he loved too much was inflected with cancer and died in 1938; he remained a widower until his departure.
One main incident may stand as the most significant one in his whole life. After visiting England and adopting Ezra Pound's advice in 1912, Frost began to find his own techniques and threads which were the reflections of his own preoccupatio