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Can Books Save the Earth?: A digital anthology of green literature

On Robert Frost

Poet Daniel Hoffman described Robert Frost as “a national celebrity, our nearly official poet laureate, and a great performer in the tradition of that earlier master of the literary vernacular” (poets.org), however, Frost’s rise to prominence was not particularly easy. Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California to his parents William Prescott Frost, Jr. and Isabelle Moodie. Frost spent the first forty years of his life unknown to most of the world. He attended Dartmouth College followed by Harvard University, although he never was able to earn a formal college degree because of lingering health issues in his youth. After his attempts at college, he moved to England with his wife Elinor Miriam White whom he met in high school. While Frost was in England, he met several poets who influenced his career including Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. Most notably, he also became good friends with Ezra Pound who helped him promote and publish his work. When he came back to America, he taught at both Amherst College and Middleburry College for 40 years while expanding his career as a poet; three of his most famous poems, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171621), “Nothing Gold Can Stay” (https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/nothing-gold-can-stay), and “The Road Not Taken” (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173536), were all written within his first 10 years back in the US. Robert Frost died on January 29, 1963, as one of America’s best, most successful poets; over the course of his life he was awarded 4 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any poet in history, and was a US poet laureate from 1958-1959.

On Robert Frost

Robert Frost isn’t simply your everyday nature poet that writes about the beauties of nature and how much they mean to him. Instead, Frost takes his green poetry on a different route; most of his poems that include nature have humans in them as the main focus of the story. “Frost sees in nature a symbol of man’s relation to the world. Though he writes about a forest or a wildflower, his real subject is humanity” (Lynen). Maybe you’re thinking that because of Frost’s inclusion of humans in his poetry, he cannot truly be considered a nature poet. That assumption is fair, but to consider some of his particular writings such as “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” and “The Road Not Taken” not under the category of green writing would be a mistake. To me, green writing is a piece of literature that is able to make the connection between humans and the environment by capturing the attention of the readers with great environmental imagery to go along with humans that can properly appreciate their surroundings. In all three of these poems, there is a human playing a big role, but the importance of that person is to give the reader the understanding that nature is only beautiful if someone is out there enjoying it.

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is a nature poem by Robert Frost that was written in June 1922. The poem focuses around a man traveling through snowy, beautiful woods where he realizes that he is in awe of what nature has provided him. He eventually returns to his town, but not without a struggle to leave behind the woods that he had discovered.

The traveler stops along his journey when he stumbles across such an aesthetically pleasing sight like these woods. What is most unique about this particular poem is that, it is not as if the nature was one of a utopia; the imagery is not your stereotypical green grass with beautiful trees and rainbows in the background. The narrator says, “Between the woods and the frozen lake, the darkest evening of the year” (Lines 7-8). It is a snowy evening and it just so happens to be the darkest day of the year, yet even with the snow, the frozen lake, and the darkness, the traveler still sees the true beauty of these specific woods. This shows that the poem’s main character knows what real beauty is; it is not always about bright sunny days with everything going perfectly in the setting. A dark, cold, remote environment can be just as beautiful if the viewer of it has the ability to understand the real value of what they are looking at, and that is definitely the case with the traveler in this situation.

Along with the traveler’s visual love for the nature he or she is a part of, this poem also meets the criteria because of the viewer’s emotional attachment to the woods. The traveler begins by saying, “Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; he will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow” (Lines 1-4). That stanza is so meaningful because it shows that the reader knows that he probably shouldn’t be stopping there because the property belongs to someone else, however, he loves the sight so much that he is willing to take the risk in order to take in his surroundings. Later in the poem the traveler says, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep” (Lines 13-16). The traveler loves the aesthetic so much that it becomes hard to detach from what they are seeing. The only reason why the traveler leaves is because of an obligation to get back to where he was initially headed. This helps the poem fit the definition of green writing even more because it not only tells, but also shows the reader exactly how important the environment is to the traveler. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is such a great fit for my definition because it not only discusses great environmental sights, but also shows that humans are cherishing them to the fullest extent possible.

“Nothing Gold Can Stay” was written in 1923 and it is another one of Frost’s many famous poems. This poem is a stellar metaphor that connects nature’s aging of leaves and flowers to humans lives as a whole in that any given thing will be great for a period of time, yet all great things unfortunately do come to an end. This poem is a little bit different than some of Frost’s other poems because there is no human directly involved, however, the metaphor that humans can relate to along with the imagery of nature make this enough of a fit for my definition of green writing.

To start off this poem, the narrator says, “Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower” (Lines 1-3). This sets up the overall point of the poem by describing to the reader that everything in nature can be seen as beautiful, or as “gold” at some point in its life. However, the narrator goes on to say, “But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, so dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay” (Lines 4-8). When Frost says this, it is him saying that nature is beautiful and you should enjoy it because it most likely won’t be there forever. He even uses examples of things that were beautiful but ended such as dawn on a daily basis having to become just a normal day, and the Garden of Eden being such a beautiful place, but eventually being gone.

A metaphor like this one is so incredible because, from a human’s perspective, it can be compared to almost every situation that you stumble upon. Everything great in life should be properly enjoyed because one day that leaf will subside to leaf and what you once loved will be gone. I love this poem in general, but especially when considering how it falls under the green writing criteria. It gives great imagery when mentioning flowers, dawn, and Eden, and it gives humans something to relate to when it comes to the metaphor of everything one day being gone.

“The Road Not Taken” is yet another classic poem from Frost that he wrote in 1916. This poem is the story of a man that is stuck between two different roads that he could take and decides on the path that he thinks is more aesthetically pleasing. Then, later on in life, he reflects on what the other road could have possibly been like, but realizes that even though it was a life changing decision, he made the right one for sure.

Frost starts his poem by saying, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth” (Lines 1-5). Frost’s opening stanza sets the scene for the travelers setting and what his decision will soon have to be. He came to a fork in the woods and wishes he could travel both, but he had to carefully evaluate the two options as well as he could before he made his decision. The poem says, “Then took the other, as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear; though as for that the passing there had worn them really about the same” (Lines 6-10). This sets up the idea that there are two separate paths that the traveler has to choose from. One appears a little more worn down than the other, probably because it is seemingly the correct path to take. However, the other path is so much more appealing to the traveler because it seems like not as many people had walked through it to take away from its beauty. The next stanza starts by saying, “And both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back” (Lines 11-15). In this second stanza, the traveler has decided that while both paths look nice, one appears to be better looking even though it has not been traveled on as often as the other. This shows that the traveler had a tough decision to make and even despite the fact that one road was clearly taken less often than the other, he was still willing to take the risk simply because of the beauty that he saw in the path. Momentarily, the traveler wondered whether or not he made the right choice, but decided that there was no going back from there; he had made his decision and it was final. The final stanza from Frost says, “ I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence: two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference” (Lines 16-20). Frost closes the poem by depicting the future when the very same traveler is thinking back to the decision he made to take the road less traveled by. Even though it might not have been the same road many others decided to follow, it made a huge impact on his life and he is perfectly fine with where he ended up in his journey.

“The Road Not Taken” fits the criteria of green writing so well because Frost effectively draws the reader’s attention by using environmental imagery to set the scene of the fork in the woods with the two similar, but very different roads. Frost also does a great job at displaying the human’s story and showing that the human did not simply pick a road; he carefully made his decision based on his evaluation of the natural beauty of each option, which clearly shows that the main character properly appreciated the environment he found himself in.

In conclusion, Frost’s poems “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” and “The Road Not Taken,” are three perfect examples of green writing. In order to meet my personal definition of green writing, the poem must be able to make the connection between humans and the environment by capturing the attention of the readers with great environmental imagery to go along with humans that can properly appreciate their surroundings. These particular poems from Frost certainly meet those criteria and make for great examples of green writing.

Bibliography
“Robert Frost.” Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web 16 Mar. 2016. https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/robert-frost
“Robert Frost Biography.” Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web 16 Mar. 2016.
http://www.biography.com/people/robert-frost-20796091
“Robert Frost.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost
Frost, Robert. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2016.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171621
Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173536
Frost, Robert. “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/nothing-gold-can-stay
Lynen, John F. “Nature and Pastoralism” The Pastoral Art of Robert Frost. Yale University Press, n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.
http://www.frostfriends.org/FFL/Nature%20and%20Pastoralism%20-%20Lynen/lynenessay1.html

Media: Moras, Walter. Verschneite Waldlandschaft. Digital image. Wikimedia Commons. Web. 13 Apr. 2016. 

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