Essay Example on Ciardi A New Way of Analysis

In John Ciardi's Robert Frost The Way to the Poem he deconstructs Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and displays a new way of poetic analysis He sheds a light on not just the stereotypical analytic question of what does the poem mean but how does the poem mean and its relation to the nature of poetry He explains this aspect by exhibiting the extensive suggestive ideas presented by Frost Also to delve deeper into the literary components that compose literary works Ciardi discusses the importance of understanding the underlying meanings in poetry and gives Frost as an example This can be seen on page 3 when Ciardi exclaims Many readers are forever unable to accept the poet s essential duplicity It is almost safe to say that a poem is never about what it seems to be about The question of How a poem means is a deeper in depth concept of analysis itself which is suggested by this statement The duplicity in meaning that a poet implement is essential to the readers full understanding of the poem This suggests that regarding the nature of poetry analysis is beneficial however one can t just scratch the surface when doing so For example in Frost's poem on lines 6 8 he says To stop without a farmhouse near between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year 

A deeper look at literary elements in a poem can be seen with Frost poem For example on lines 15 16 He states And miles to go before I sleep And miles to go before I sleep Repetition being the literary device here the repetition of the phrase And miles to go before I sleep Breaking this apart detail by detail the miles to go being repeated puts emphasis on how long he has or the amount of year he must live The miles meaning the distance and passing of time As well as the before I sleep not just meaning the tiring or exhaustion of the person The deeper meaning being an eternal sleep or death The essence of this except being carpe diem or make the most out of life while you are still on this earth By picking these details apart we see how this impacts the meaning of the poem and how it can also teach the reader a lesson John Ciardi took an interesting stance on how we analyze and deconstruct a poem In his analysis of Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening in his essay titled Robert Frost The Way to the Poem He discusses Frosts underlying ideas and suggestive ideas Along with the idea of delving into the deeper meaning of the literary elements and devices that makes up poems I have learned that we should always find the meaning of a poem however how should one go about finding that meaning and how does this process impact our understanding of poems and literary work in general