English & Literature
The poem "Birches" is an amalgamation of abonden useage of matafors. Explain?
the poem Birches by Robert Frost
the poem Birches by Robert Frost
An abundant use of metaphors?
In the poem, Birches, the passage about the woods is frightening, as Frost uses it as a metaphor for everyday life. Describing the trees after the ice storm, Frost's
language is both exact and vivid. In line 9, he begins to get carried away: his
language becomes poetic, which is to say that it becomes metaphorical. Describing the effect of wind and light on the ice in the trees, he says that the "stir" of the wind "cracks and crazes their [the trees'] enamel." Well, the birches do not really have enamel on them; that is a metaphor for the ice. And what does "crazes" mean? In a 1918 talk, "The Unmade Word," to high school students about this very poem, he asked the students about his use of the word "crazes." One of the students took notes on the talk and later described it. Frost asked, "Where do you think I got that word 'crazes'? [no answer] Mr. Frost went to the blackboard, and drew a pattern of crackly china." The word, as this anecdote reveals, is a metaphor to explain the image of the trees. And this is not the only metaphor. It is just the beginning of a series of metaphors. In the next four lines (which comprise a complete sentence), one finds even more. It is as if, having created one metaphor, he finds he cannot stop himself from creating even more. He goes so far as to say that "You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen." Again, in his talk to the high school students mentioned above, Frost said, "I wonder if you think I fetched that word dome too far?" After asking that question, he added, "but I like it."These are not the only metaphors in this part of the poem. After comparing the trees to china or pottery, and then to heaven, Frost next makes the most alluring and surprising metaphor of them all: he compares the trees to "girls on hands and knees that throw their hair / Before them over their heads to dry in the sun." Here, he introduces a sensual image and prepares the way for a serious theme about love that will emerge only at the end of the poem. But at this point, in the first twenty lines, it is enough to notice that Frost has devoted more than half of his lines (twelve) to metaphors about the
ice on the trees. Without using like or as, the first part of Frost's poem is little more than a comparison of ice-storm-bent trees to various other things and people.
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