On Grief and Reason-Ben Barber
In Joseph Brodsky’s essay “On Grief
and Reason”, he argues that Robert Frost’s poetry contains a deeper and darker
meaning. He supports his stance by analyzing two of frosts poems, “Come In” and
“Home Burial”. He breaks down the poems into smaller parts and analyzes them separately.
After he discovers the smaller meanings he is able to connect them together
into a central theme. From a stanza to a line to a word, Brodsky is able to
find the meaning of the poem. Brodsky uses this strategy to prove Frost’s
darker meanings in his poems. Because of his accurate and precise descriptions
his explanations are hard to argue with. Because of this, I do buy into his
argument, after looking back on Frost’s poetry that I have already read I began
to notice that they all did seem to have a darker tone to them. Also, analyzing
in this way shows a pattern in Frost’s word choice that I had not noticed. This
was very interesting to me because I had not realized that he had such a
negative tone in his poetry. It seems as if the majority of the words, when
singled out, have some type of negatively related correlation with them. The
essay helped me understand Frost more as well as to see the present connection
between his poetry. I knew his poetry wasn’t the happiest, but I had not put
together the darker meanings until now. Brodsky uses New Criticism because of
the way he analyzes the words for what they actually mean.
I felt like someone of his ideas were a little far fetched. I agree with you though because his analyses were very detailed and seem hard to agree. I also feel like he tried to find deeper meanings in each word. I also agree that Frost's work can be very dark and I didn't realize that before.
ReplyDeleteI agree, there were many dark tones and themes used in Frost's poetry that I had never noticed before. It is interesting to hear that Frost had such a dark style but I agree with Grace that some of Brodsky's ideas were a bit too far fetched. At times it sounds like Brodsky is trying to break the work down to make it work for his idea and thesis vs. actually breaking it down for its true meaning. After reading the essay there were many things I agreed with but some I found to be tricks Brodsky was using to persuade the audience to agree with his essay.
ReplyDeleteI feel as if his analyses were very detailed but could use just a little more explanation, dive more into what he was analyzing. I never read poetry with a dark tone in mind, because I feel as if it is supposed to be a happier light- hearted form of writing. So I agree with what Grace said, that I have never thought of Frost's work as a dark kind of poetry until now.
ReplyDeleteI loved how he was able to connect his meaning to a single word. By doing this, it allowed me to believe his ideas even more because they seemed to be truly connecting to the overall theme. Sophia does bring up an excellent point; however, he does write the essay to assert his meaning, and he seems to stretch it to such a length that it seems like he is warping the poem to suit him. Looking at it as a whole, it seems like his ideas are within reason. The tones of each word allow him to create darker images, and by noticing this, it broadens the understanding of the poem to fit Brodsky's perspective.
ReplyDeleteI think it's crazy that some of the people above have always approached poetry with happiness and light. As someone who has a reputation of being happy/lighthearted, I have always turned away from poetry because of I've always found it dark, mysterious, and hard to understand, which is exactly how I approached this article. Because Frost's poetry is so dark, I had a hard time understanding the darkness of its--that stuff just isn't me. But I understood Brodsky's argument and I completely agree with you when you said that Brodsky is hard to argue with, though I can see the other side.
ReplyDelete