Robert Frost's "The Figure a Poem Makes" analysis

The Figure a Poem Makes by Robert Frost explores the true purpose of a poem and what a poet should strive to accomplish in writing one. Frost was a teacher and a lecturer as well as a very successful and influential poet. He won four Pulitzer Prizes for his outstanding work. In this essay, Frost explained what he believed is the reason for writing and reading poems. He wrote that poetry should be used to share knowledge and insight that can last lifetimes. Frost expressed the idea that poems should be eternal in that their teachings remain relevant and useful for many years after they are written. The purpose of the essay was to share that idea with others and hopefully inspire people to write better poems, not only for entertaining the audience, but also to teach them something important. Frost wrote this essay with other writers and poets as the intended audience. He wanted them to understand that they should write with the same emotion that they wish the audience of their writings to feel as they read them. To prove his point, Frost uses rhetoric devices such as analogies. In the third page of his essay, Frost states, "Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.” He used this specific analogy to help the reader understand how a poet should be written with ease and that worry will not help to get it anywhere. While reading this essay I personally found that Robert Frost was incredible at using rhetoric to support his point. While I would have appreciated a wider variety of devices instead of only comparisons, I was fully convinced of Frost’s point and I believe that this work influenced me in a significant way. As a writier, it taught me the importance of writing with passion and emotion, which is what I think Frost was trying to accomplish.

(image from 95percent.com)

This image is of a heart draw on paper to show how Frost wants writers to write with their heart and their feelings in their work.