Write a Critical Appreciation of 'Birches'.

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Jacqui Metcalf                             Literary Studies                         22nd March 2004

Literary Studies Coursework

Write a Critical Appreciation of ‘Birches’. 

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, United States of America, on March 26th 1874. He was one of America's leading 20th-century poets and a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. An essentially pastoral poet often associated with rural New England, Frost wrote poems whose philosophical dimensions transcend any region. Although his verse forms are traditional - he often said that ‘he would as soon play tennis without a net as write free verse’ - he was a pioneer in the interplay of rhythm and meter and in the poetic use of the vocabulary and inflections of everyday speech. His poetry is thus traditional and experimental, regional and universal.  He died in Boston, on January 29th, 1963.  

‘Birches’ is written in blank verse, presented in the form of a single stanza, emphasizing the narrative chronicle of boyhood memories. The poem illustrates the journey through life, using nature to symbolize his triumphs and disappointments. The opening line stating: ‘When I see birches bend to left and right/Across the lines of straighter darker trees,’ subtly introduces the theme of imagination coupled with opposing, darker realities. The plosive alliteration of birches bend, suggest the movement of these elegant trees as they sway and groan in the wind, bowed under the weight of their snow-laden crust.  The fantasy thought of: ‘I like to think that some boy’s been swinging them/But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay’, develops the dichotomy of imagination being at variance with reality, hinting of Frost’s wish to return to his childhood days.

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 The first twenty lines of the verse are set in late winter, just before the herald of Spring, a season that most suggests imaginative stirrings, when the natural world begins to rouse itself from winter’s lethargy. Frost creates wonderland images of woodland in winter as the birches are: ‘Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning/After a rain’. When Frost observes that ‘As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel’, he seems to suggest that even nature in all her crystal white purity, cannot maintain perfection. The alliteration and onomatopoeia in ‘cracks and crazes’, emphasizes the impact of nature, as ...

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