Poetry for Students, Volume 35

Acquainted with the Night Robert Frost’s poem ‘‘Acquainted with the Night’’ first appeared in 1927 in theVirginia Quarterly Revi ...

Frost held various jobs during the next two years, and in 1894, he had his first poem pub- lished in theIndependent, a New York ...

on his grave marker reads: ‘‘I had a lover’s quar- rel with the world.’’ Only two of his children outlived the poet: Irma, who d ...

feel detached, aimless, and purposeless. The fact that the speaker in this poem is out at night suggests he may have trouble sle ...

listener, whose presence is implied by what the speaker says and the speaker’s use of direct address. By contrast, a soliloquy i ...

Like T. S. Eliot, Frost studied Latin and Greek, and both poets drew upon their knowl- edge of Dante. Eliot’s poem uses a quotat ...

remain in England, he transferred to Merton College, Oxford University, where he took his degree. Frost returned to the New Engl ...

reviewed the first book inPoetry Magazinein the fall 1913. Frost was glad for the attention a review by the celebrated author br ...

appreciated and drew upon and discusses how his poem ‘‘Acquainted with the Night’’ can be inter- preted within that tradition. E ...

theory of poetry quite unlike what had been espoused previously. In the first generation of romantic poets, Wordsworth and Coler ...

taken for granted. The nineteenth century had witnessed a growing middle class of literate peo- ple who were increasingly fond o ...

hard to describe. The literal night is equated with depression or loneliness oralienation. It is equated with the absolute black ...

the unknown territory, a poetic experimentation that characterizes the height of American mod- ernism of Frost’s time. With its ...

neither wrong nor right’’ (12–13). While writing in a terza rima sonnet, the speaker fractures the traditional thematic break in ...

I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. ...

formless and vague. Second, water accompanies the darkness, as a prescience of the coming of life. Third, the God-figure produce ...

Eliot to assert a mythical, spiritual introspection like that of Campbell. The second tercet shows another side of the persona. ...

But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly height, One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed ...

here, but none are clearly satisfied by the poem itself. But why conceal these details? Vague and unreachable, this shifting amb ...

the nature of the human, just as darkness, water, light, moon, and sky are inseparable from the external world. The persona must ...