Robert Frost Overview

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Robert Frost is considered one of the "most popular American poets of his time." He won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times. Congress also voted him a gold medal, in "recognition of his poetry, which has enriched the culture of the United States and the philosophy of the world" (Costello 543). The poem "Birches" was first published in 1915 (Thomason 18). In Robert Frost's "Birches," the theme of reality vs. imagination is discovered through images of bent birches, symbolism of a boy swinging the trees, and the tone of words used.

The conflict of reality vs. imagination is explored through images of bent birches. Reality is depicted as birches bending and cracking after a freezing rain from the ice that was left behind. Frost let's the reader know that this is reality in lines 3-4: "I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay." He tells the reader the real reason of what bent the birches in line 5 when he states "Ice-storms do that." In the next six lines, Erica Smith notes, "we are inclined to view the ice storm negatively because Frost has used it to refute his