Frost

2 Pages 459 Words

Frost Bitten Poetry

Robert Frost is considered an icon of American poetry. Many call him America’s poet, and rightly so. He lived an eventful life, and parts of his life come through in his poetry, as is the case with the poem’s “In Hardwood groves” and “My November Guest”. Both poems give vivid imagery of the autumn, which in New England is arguably the prettiest and one of the more lengthy seasons. It is easy to see how his growing up in Salem shows in his writing.
Born in 1874 in San Francisco where Frost spent the first eleven years of his life before moving to Lawrence, Massachusetts. That early part of his life in California rarely shows in his writing and is not seen in the two previously mentioned poems. These two poems paint a picture which resembles his scenery in New England. He writes in the poem “In Hardwood Groves,” about the leaves turning brown and the falling, giving an October like setting. In “My November Guest,” he writes more of November scenery (as the title suggests). Though they are perhaps different months, they both give imagery that could easily be set in a town such as Salem. Famous for its witch trials most view Salem as a dark dreary place with “withered trees” and the ground scattered with “dark decayed leaves,” as described in these poems.
Murphy 2
In “My November Guest,” he goes on about two different views of the November scenery. “She,” though he does not say is most likely his wife sees the beauty of the dark skies, barren trees and cold breeze’s. All the while he sees these things as eye sores. This may be a reference to how the real love of his life, his wife Elinor, viewed things. Growing up Frost went through a lot of heartache, loosing his father at a young age and later his mother; he was in and out of school from the first grade all the way up to university at Harvard and Dartmouth, and also loosing a son (Elliot) to cholera. This poem ...