The figure a poem makes by Robert Frost (Text TOW#19)

       A famous and renowned American poet of the 20^th century, Robert Frost offers his own perspective of the nature of poems and their making in “the figure a poem makes”. As a preface to “Collected Poems” published in 1939, the essay explores the impact of poems to both the poet and the readers in wisdom and knowledge, in addition to the nature of the poem in sound and pleasure. The message is universal, and therefore Frost’s insight falls not only upon those fervent poem-lovers, or even the Literary Americans in general, but literary people around the world.

       In describing the essence, definition, and impacts of poems, Frost especially relied on personal experiences and didactic teachings. When he discussed the beauty and knowledge a poem brings, he purposefully repeated the word “I”, saying “for me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn’t know I knew. I am in a place, in a situation, as if I had materialized from cloud or risen out of the ground”(Oates 177). When explaining the nature of a poem’s construction, Frost again emphasized upon himself, reflecting that “more than once I should have lost my soul to radicalism if it had been the originality it was mistaken for by its young converts… the originality of a poem run in the way I have: from delight to wisdom”(Oates 178). The drawing of personal experiences, combined with Frost’s already established ethos, give his essay both validity and authority.

       With his personal experiences comes alongside didactic teachings. Frost articulates clearly what he thinks a good poem should be composed of. In discussing the construction of poems, he especially focused on variety, informing the readers that “the resources for that of vowels, consants…is not enough; we need the help of context-meaning-subject-matter”(Oates 176). Later when he describes the wisdom of poetry, a similar didactic fashion is used, “The artist must value himself as he snatches a thing a thing from some previous order in time and space into a new order…”(Oates 178). What originates from the didactic teachings of Frost is explicit criteria of the figures of good poetries; the wisdom and beauty they bring.

       Unlike childhood, Poetry will always stay.