The Art of Influence

The first readings for this week are by Robert Frost. As soon as I started reading his poems, I noticed something very familiar. The five poems by Frost all relate and surround Nature. Nature Nature Nature. If anyone asked me anything about poetry, I would give him or her one word: Nature. Even though that is a bit exaggerated, the use of nature is what I began this course with and what I found the most interesting and enjoyable.

The famous “Nature-users” are Romantics like Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. Blake and Wordsworth’s poems are more joyful and optimistic, while Coleridge’s are more negative and gloomy, much like Frost’s poems. Looking back at Samuel Coleridge’s poems, I found something very intriguing. One of his poems is titled: “Frost at Midnight.” What an amazing coincidence! Robert Frost’s name is actually part of one of Coleridge’s poem titles. Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight” and Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” are speaking about almost the same topic. The lines: “And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,/ This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood” (Coleridge 10-11) and “Whose woods these are I think I know./ His house is in the village though” (Frost 1-2) are a fitting example. Choosing only two lines in each poem, two subjects are already identical: woods and villages. In addition, both poems talk about the winter nights.

I also found that Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago” resembled a little of William Blake’s “Songs of Experience: London.” Both poems talk about the negative aspects of a specific city. In “London,” Blake writes about the “cr[ies] of every man” and “every Infant’s cry of fear,” (5-6) while “Chicago” speaks of how “on the faces of women and children [Sandburg has] seen the marks of wanton hunger” (8).