On Grief and Reason-(Edit: This is Lauren Young's! Sorry for not putting name on original post!)

In Joseph Brodsky’s renowned essay, “On Grief and Reason”, he introduces the famous author Robert Frost at the beginning of his text, briefly discusses how Frost is a “quintessential American poet”, then ponders what creates this sense of quintessence and asserts that negative happenstanes and emotions are some of the most important initiators and inspirational events that prompt individuals to create different works in literature as well as in other art disciplines. He provides support for this assertion by moving on in his essay to examine popular works by Frost, first the narrative poem “Come In” and then proceeds to examine the poem, “Home Burial”. He examines and further explicates each of these poems to show his audience and readers how the pressing undertones of negative emotions felt by the author help to inspire decisions made in each of these poems, showing how these decisions affected different aspects of the poems, such as content, syntax, and other literary decisions. He analyzes each line in a very intentional manner, managing to provide a vast amount of information to support each micro-analysis, while still keeping specificity within each of his points.

There are also tones of this being written in a somewhat personal fashion, which can probably be attributed to the fact that Brodsky identifies this work as, “...a spinoff of a seminar given four years ago at the Collège International de Philosophie, in Paris.”, although that is a point of confusion for me personally. I do think that his arguments have quite a bit of well-thought out and viable evidence, although there are still a few points of confusion for me regarding this text as well. In terms of interests and what aide me in a deeper understanding of Frost’s works, it was interesting to read an examination/explication of what inspired/prompted the subject matter and more in Frost’s works, rather than examining his works at a more so surface level without looking into the deeper meaning and emotions incited by each particular line; in all honesty, it is topic that I have never really explored within my own interpretations and analysis of poetry in the past.