Robert Frost Conversational Style
Shahin Damoui
Daniel Yu
Writing 30
10 June 2012
Robert Frost’s Conversational Style and Mock-Heroic Tone My portfolio consists of a collection of both heroic and tragic poems that incorporate the blank verse form. These poems imitate Robert Frost’s mock-heroic dialogue and conversational style. Three of these poems in particular, “The Boxer”, “The Boy In My Dreams,” and “The Interview” draw from Frederick Turner’s “The Neural Lyre” and Maurice Charney’s “Robert Frost’s Conversational Style,” in attempting to emulate a style that is an artfully fabricated imitation of ordinary conversation. My poems, like those of Frost, characterize a tone of amused and ironic detachment. Robert Frost has a unique conversational style that is unlike any other dramatists. Frost has written a large number of poems in which the speakers are engaged in conversations and tends to characterize the speakers as more of dramatic actors. In terms of poetic style, Frost utilizes the iambic pentameter and the iambic tetrameter in his conversational pieces. For example, in Frost’s poem entitled “Directive,” follows a detached, ironic narrator who tries to involve the reader in his directions. This is a memory poem about an abandoned house, an abandoned farm, an abandoned town, and most importantly an abandoned children’s playhouse. Frost writes this poem in iambic pentameter blank verse, which is relaxed and conversational. Frost attempts “to recreate the past as if it were fiction, which furthermore establishes an elegiac tone (Charney 148).” Frost’s figurative language is generally drawn from nature and contain similes and metaphors of domestic quality. For example, Frost alludes to nature when he incorporates phrases like “pecker-fretted apple tree” and “chisel work of an enormous Glacier / that braces his feet against the Arctic Pole.” These artful images are included because they are generally applied to the subject of Frost’s poems. Similarly, in my poem “The Boy In My Dreams” many
Daniel Yu
Writing 30
10 June 2012
Robert Frost’s Conversational Style and Mock-Heroic Tone My portfolio consists of a collection of both heroic and tragic poems that incorporate the blank verse form. These poems imitate Robert Frost’s mock-heroic dialogue and conversational style. Three of these poems in particular, “The Boxer”, “The Boy In My Dreams,” and “The Interview” draw from Frederick Turner’s “The Neural Lyre” and Maurice Charney’s “Robert Frost’s Conversational Style,” in attempting to emulate a style that is an artfully fabricated imitation of ordinary conversation. My poems, like those of Frost, characterize a tone of amused and ironic detachment. Robert Frost has a unique conversational style that is unlike any other dramatists. Frost has written a large number of poems in which the speakers are engaged in conversations and tends to characterize the speakers as more of dramatic actors. In terms of poetic style, Frost utilizes the iambic pentameter and the iambic tetrameter in his conversational pieces. For example, in Frost’s poem entitled “Directive,” follows a detached, ironic narrator who tries to involve the reader in his directions. This is a memory poem about an abandoned house, an abandoned farm, an abandoned town, and most importantly an abandoned children’s playhouse. Frost writes this poem in iambic pentameter blank verse, which is relaxed and conversational. Frost attempts “to recreate the past as if it were fiction, which furthermore establishes an elegiac tone (Charney 148).” Frost’s figurative language is generally drawn from nature and contain similes and metaphors of domestic quality. For example, Frost alludes to nature when he incorporates phrases like “pecker-fretted apple tree” and “chisel work of an enormous Glacier / that braces his feet against the Arctic Pole.” These artful images are included because they are generally applied to the subject of Frost’s poems. Similarly, in my poem “The Boy In My Dreams” many
Cited: Charney, Maurice. "Robert Frost 's Conversational Style." Connotations (2001): n. pag. Print. Turner, Frederick, and Ernest Poppel. "The Neural Lyre: Poetic Meter, the Brain, and Time." Poetry Foundation 142.5 (1983): n. pag. Print. Frost, Robert. "3. The Death of the Hired Man. Frost, Robert. 1915. North of Boston." 3. The Death of the Hired Man. Frost, Robert. 1915. North of Boston. N.p., 1915. Web. 12 June 2012. Frost, Robert. "Poetry Archives." Poetry X » » Robert Frost » "Directive" N.p., 1946. Web. 12 June 2012. Frost, Robert. "Internal.org Poets." The Runaway. N.p., 1918. Web. 12 June 2012.