Diverging in the Woods: The Journeys of Robert Frost and T.S. Eliot to WWI England and the Impact on Fashioning Two Distinct Poetic Identities.

Abstract

Over the past several decades the term Modern Poetry has undergone an expansion of which poets it should be applied to. Through a reinterpretation of the qualities of modern verse, poets who in the past have been left outside that category have been solicitously added to it. One such author is the great New England poet, Robert Frost, who over the past fifty years, through a dissection of his entire body of work, has benefited from a new appreciation for the innovation that can be found in his poetry. Though the innovative qualities of his verse may never be compared equally with the breakthrough modernism of T. S. Eliot, nevertheless the two now find themselves existing within the same category. This book examines the challenges associated with a reclassification of Frost’s work as modern, with a particular emphasis on the period when he and Eliot traveled to England and launched their respective careers. With a new lens applied to one of Frost’s most admired poems, I will uncover a message locked inside that shows that in those early years Frost made a deliberate decision to travel down a decidedly non-modern road with his poetry.