Today RH said that all of Frost's poems begin with anxiety, sometimes proceeding to a resolution, more often not. I agree, though I hadn' t been able to put it so succinctly. Perhaps that's why I'm identifying with them so much.
Other thoughts about Frost today: In his poems, one sees what it means to be a virtuoso in the English language. Frost plays English the way a great pianist plays the piano--he can make it do whatever he wants, can play anything, knows where all the notes are without looking. So few poets achieve such mastery of so broad an instrument. Stevens was a virtuoso only of his own idiom, Williams mastered the corner of the language he chose, Eliot was too uninterested in anything but high culture (of course these three are among my favorite poets), but Frost made English do what he needed it to.
And within a comparatively narrow range of subject matter, Frost managed to convey a wide breadth of of human experience and perception.
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