"What does it think it's doing running west / When all the other country brooks flow east": An analysis of liberation in "West-running Brook," "After Apple-Picking," "A Noiseless Patient Spider," and "A Woman Waits for Me"

Authors Avatar

“What does it think it’s doing running west / When all the other country brooks flow east”: An analysis of liberation in “West-running Brook,” “After Apple-Picking,” “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” and “A Woman Waits for Me”

        In “West-running Brook,” “After Apple-Picking,” “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” and “A Woman Waits for Me,” emphasis on the structure serves to accentuate the fundamental theme of liberation as both Frost and Whitman diverge from conventional poetic norms even as they explore equally unconventional ideas.

Poetry is organic. A quintessential principle proposed by Frost of which he endorsed both in his essays and in his finished verse. In asserting the freedom of poetry from former tradition, he reaffirmed Emerson’s doctrine that it is not meter but a meter-making argument that produce poetry. “The freshness of a poem,” Frost believed, “belongs absolutely to its not having been thought out and then set to verse” (Symbol 26). In doing so would bind the poet to a fatal compromise, one analogous to composing music to accommodate a pre-selected set of lyrics.

Free verse would then seem to be the most ideal in terms of structure to compose poetry: [in accordance with Frost’s beliefs] a style considered to have no limitations. Because free verse doesn’t rely on a rhythmic meter, it is replaced by the natural rhythms of ordinary speech. The alternating sequence in “West-running Brook” provides a rhythm that is based on phrases, sentences and paragraphs which mimics a conversational dialogue. The flow of the poem reveals a naturalistic quality as it rises and falls with the poet’s emotions and thoughts. This appears to allow the poem to lose any artificiality due to its not being confined in any particular way.

Join now!

        The further use of water as a symbol within “West-running Brook” enforces Frost’s notion of liberation. Although water can be confined to a certain shape or form such as a cup (and in Frost’s case, sonnets and villanelles), its true form is undefined and therefore allows it the ability to mold to any shape it wishes: the freedom to conform. The mentioning of the fact that “it’s…running west / When all the other country brooks flow east” enhances the notion of liberation from mandated conventional norms.

        Walt Whitman, also an advocator of Emersonian doctrine, provided a vivid depiction of organic verse ...

This is a preview of the whole essay