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How did Robert Frost's life influence his poetry?

The span of poet Robert Frost's life (1874–1963) affected his poetry, as both his life and the forms of his poetry embraced both 19th century and more modern 20th century styles. For example, while maintaining the traditional meters of poetry, he embraced a more modern, direct style. He used the traditional meter of poetry, not free verse as modern poets did, and he also kept to traditional line lengths. However, like modern poets, he included...

The span of poet Robert Frost's life (1874–1963) affected his poetry, as both his life and the forms of his poetry embraced both 19th century and more modern 20th century styles. For example, while maintaining the traditional meters of poetry, he embraced a more modern, direct style. He used the traditional meter of poetry, not free verse as modern poets did, and he also kept to traditional line lengths. However, like modern poets, he included dialogue in his poems, in works such as "The Housekeeper," in New England vernacular language. 


In addition, his works came out of the years he spent living in New England, where his family returned in 1884. His ancestors were New Englanders, and he incorporated a sense of the land, particularly the countryside of New Hampshire, into his works. From 1915 on, he spent some of his time at a farm in Franconia, New Hampshire. In poems such as "After Apple-Picking," he is able to endow nature with a sense of wonder and the sublime, as the apples he picked become part of a dream in which "magnified apples appear and disappear." 


Frost also experienced tremendous personal loss. His father died when he was 11, and several of his children died young, as did his wife. In addition, mental illness ran in his family, and he suffered from depression. This sense of loss, along with melancholy, surfaces in his works, such as "Reluctance," in which he speaks of dead leaves scattered on the ground and the end of the season. 

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