19 pages • 38 minutes read
Robert FrostA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“Acquainted with the Night” is and is not a sonnet; it is as well both homage to and parody of the terza rima form associated most notably with its inventor the Renaissance poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) and his epic narrative The Divine Comedy, about a pilgrim soul who at midlife learns the horrors of sin and the glorious reward of salvation and Paradise. Technically, the poem is a sonnet. It abides by the conventional 14-line form. The poem is executed in four tercets, or groups of three lines (terza rima means “third line” in Italian), and then a closing couplet. That Frost, a master of form, fractures the sonnet suggests his sly irreverent tone that helps obviate the poem’s apparent oppressive melancholy. Relax, the poem’s form says, it’s a walk in the rain.
The rhyme scheme is tricky. Terza rima as a poetic form is demanding. Frost, himself a student of prosody, against the generation of Modernists who came to embrace his work, advocated that the artistry of a poet expressed itself in conventional forms rather than in the experimental carelessness of open verse.
By Robert Frost
After Apple-Picking
Robert Frost
A Time To Talk
Robert Frost
Birches
Robert Frost
Dust of Snow
Robert Frost
Fire and Ice
Robert Frost
Mending Wall
Robert Frost
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost
October
Robert Frost
Once by the Pacific
Robert Frost
Out, Out—
Robert Frost
Putting in the Seed
Robert Frost
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Robert Frost
The Death of the Hired Man
Robert Frost
The Gift Outright
Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost
West-Running Brook
Robert Frost