The American poet Robert Frost was an acknowledged traditional poet in that he followed the classic rules of rhyme and meter well before Modernists such as T.S. Eliot and E.E. Cummings rejected those traditions. Frost’s major contribution was his “portraiture” of New England in poems that not only illustrated a rural way of life in lively pictures, but also utilized a Jungian symbolism into his canon. Poems such as “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” (dealing with the attractiveness of death) and “The Road Not Taken” (standing for the consequences of any choice and the opportunity cost imbedded in choice-making) serve as philosophical statements as well as sensitive observations. Due to their structural simplicity, his poems are easy to memorize and recite. Frost's keen eye for details of New England life gives him a place next to Walt Whitman and William Carlos Williams in the American poetic canon that illustrates an American life now past.
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