Belief and Uncertainty in the Poetry of Robert Frost [Paperback]

Robert Packs lifelong delight in Robert Frost's intricate, beautiful, and profound poetry shines through in the essays in this book. He confronts such broad themes as mourning, inheritance, nature, and the imagination, bringing to bear historical, psychological, Darwinian, and close-textual-reading interpretive approaches. Chapter one sets Frosts work in the tradition of nature writing, from the Book of Genesis through modern American ecological works. Chapter two examines the profound influences of the Book of Job, Darwin, and evolutionary theory on Frosts thinking. There follow chapters that structurally and philosophically compare Wordsworths Michael to Frosts Wild Grapes, focusing on the themes of inheritance, grieving, and the potency of the imagination. The reader encounters Frost as teacher and preacher, Frosts idea of how beliefs are affirmed, the simultaneous representation of adult memory and immediate childhood sensation, and the underlying duality of place and nothingness, which forms the existential background for his stay against confusionthe consoling purpose of Frost's poetic art.

ROBERT PACK has published fifteen volumes of his own poetry and is Middlebury College Professor Emeritus of Literature and Creative Writing. Currently, he is teaching in the Honors College of the University of Montana in Missoula. He and Jay Parini have edited eight poetry anthologies for UPNE, the most recent of which is Contemporary Poetry of New England (2002).

Taking Dominion over the Wilderness Darwin, the Book of Job, and Frost's A Masque of Reason Loss and Inheritance in Wordsworth's Michael and Frost's Wild Grapes Mourning and Acceptance The Modern Muse: Stevens and Frost Enigmatical Reserve: Robert Frost as Teacher and Preacher Robert Frost's As If Belief Self-Decpetion, Lying, and Fictive Truthfulness Reading the Landscape: Place and Nothingness Parenthood and Perspective Index of Major Themes Indexló+