The Theme of Boundaries in the Poetry of Robert Frost

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 65%, University of Reading (Department of English and American Literature), course: Writing America 2, language: English, abstract: Robert Lee Frost belongs to one of the most popular and influential writers of the 20th century. Although his career started only at the age of forty, he made his mark as a poet, becoming more and more widely known until at the end he was the United States' de facto poet laureate.1 The clarity of Frost's diction, the colloquial rhythms, the simplicity of his images and above all the folksy speaker- these are intended to make the poems look natural, unplanned. By investing in the New England terrain he revitalised the tradition of New England regionalism. Readers who accepted Frost's persona and his setting as typically American accepted the powerful myth that this rural part of the country was the heart of America. Among the major concerns that appear in Frost's poetry are the fragility of life, the consequences of rejecting or accepting the conditions of one's life, the passion of inconsolable grief, the difficulty of sustaining intimacy, the fear of loneliness and isolation, the tensions between the individual and society, and the place of tradition and custom.3 The tensions between the individual and society become apparent in Frost's examination and metaphorical use of geographical boundaries. In this respect, I am going to focus on one of Frost's most popular poems Mending Wall from the volume of poems called North of Boston (1914) and a more less known poem Trespass from A Witness Tree (1942).