After Apple-Picking Essay

785 Words4 Pages
"After Apple-Picking" is one of those early poems by Robert Frost that makes people think of him as a quaint, New England poet. Along with "The Road Not Taken" and others, this poem reminds people of simple American country life, with kids on a tire swing and mom bringing out the lemonade. But this image of Frost drives many poetry scholars crazy, because they know that the man was so much more than that. Even his peaceful New England poems – and this is definitely one of them – contain a depth and mystery that few American writers have been able to capture. "After Apple-Picking" makes a quintessential autumn activity seem like a solemn and spiritual ritual, full of strange and disturbing implications. "After Apple-Picking" was published in Frost's second collection, North of Boston, in 1915. His first collection was titled A Boy's Will, and it contained many short lyric poems about nature and country life. North of Boston, on the other hand, contains several longer poems, and Frost also began to explore human dramas and conflicts. It is one of his best-known works, with such classics as "Mending Wall," "Home Burial," and "Death of the Hired Man." The collection gave him his first taste of fame. However, by this point Frost was still considered by many people to be a very talented "regional" poet. In later years, he would become one of America's most recognizable writers, and one of the few poets to grace the cover of Time magazine. He even delivered a poem at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. Frost's poems are considered hard to place within the main literary traditions of the twentieth century. He wrote in iambic pentameter, sometimes in rhyme and sometimes not, at a time when many poets were experimenting with looser forms. He didn't try to write in complicated forms like the villanelle or the pantoum. And yet the simplicity and directness of
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