Frost's Sounds -- Shaping the Feeling of Term Paper

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Frost's Sounds -- Shaping The Feeling Of The Poem's Reader

Unlike the measured procession of syllables and the soft vowel sounds that characterizes the feelings conveyed in "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening," the poet Robert Frost uses sharp, cracklings consonants to denote the dangerous and active life of the birches of his poem "Birches." The poem about "Birches," particularly in the first lines that set the scene and the stage for the active engagement of the poet with nature, are rife with crackling sharp 'b' plosive sounds that seem to create a sense of brittleness and breaking and exploding upon the reader's ear, as opposed to the softer vs. And ws of the more leisurely and measured progression of verbiage in "Stopping by the Woods."

"When I see birches bend to left and right," "Birches" begins, immediately locating the reader in a state of action, activating the reader's sense of motion and sight, rather than the feelings of smothering tranquility and calm of a "Snowy Evening." True, "Birches" also takes place in winter -- but in a different, more dangerous and kinesthetic kind of winter, where "ice storms and boys" cause the birches, to "crackle" and "swing and sway," over the course of the first stanza.

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This feeling of motion and danger, deployed through the use of sharp active words, particularly verbs, with strong consonant plosives such as 'bs', is in direct contrast to the more reasoned and meditative tones of the poem about the snowy woods.

Both Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening," and "Birches" make use of external natural states to reveal aspects of the poet's inner consciousness. Both poems take place in a state of cold, but one is a coldness of ice and breaking, the other a coldness of silence. The "Birches" are "loaded" with ice in winter, and "soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells/Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust." The cold crusting over the trees creates fragility and breakage. Thus, "Birches" winter is transient and active, and even destructive, as the crackling, plosive b-sounds and sibilant s-hiss how "such heaps of broken glass to sweep away/You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen."

Although "Birches" is about apparently planted trees, the theme of the poem is dramatic, almost eschatological as the seasons cause the trees to change and the ice to break and form glass. Unlike the horse of "Stopping by the Woods on….....

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