Being in a Landscape: Reconsidering the Poetry of Robert Frost as a Model for Environmental Engagement in an Era of Accelerating Climate Change

Abstract

This thesis re-examines several of Robert Frost’s poems in light of his identification as a synecdochist and aim of reaching an ever-widening audience to provide that audience with a “momentary stay against confusion.” It explores the potential of his poetry to serve as a model for contemporary engagement with the environment. Supported by excerpts from the poet’s letters, speeches and prose, it considers these poems as acts of ecopoesis or “making” of the “home or dwelling-place” as defined by Jonathan Bate in Song of the Earth and asserts that Frost’s poetic celebrations of the reciprocity between humankind and environment serve to subtly challenge assumptions of human supremacy over other inhabitants of Earth.

With a primary focus on poems that were begun or completed during the first decade of the twentieth century – a time when the poet was out of necessity, actively and regularly engaged with a thirty-acre lot of land in Derry, New Hampshire – it argues that the poet’s conscious choice to dwell in rural settings where he could engage in a continued practice of reflection within revisited environment enabled the creation of vital poetry concerning what was in existence where he was in existence. Through discussion of John Elder’s essay “The Poetry of Experience” an account of his field experience of Frost’s enigmatic poem “Mowing,” it also explores the educational value of these poems as they provide opportunities for a wide range of readers to engage imaginatively with the environment, an activity of increasing importance as we face the challenges of global climate change in the twenty-first century.