Crossroads in a wood: Robert Frost and 'New Hampshire

New Hampshire is one of Robert Frost's most intricately designed collections and perhaps more than any other in his oeuvre lends a sense of thematic coherence to the individual poems it comprises. This possibility has been neglected by literary historians and Frost scholars primarily because New Hampshire appeared at a divisive moment in literary history and runs somewhat counter to the pervasive perception of Frost as a relatively simple poet whose career was a willful counterpoint to the rococo tendencies of Modernist verse.;Frost demonstrated from the outset of his career a desire to produce books of poetry that were coherent and demonstrative of the rhetorical strength of the book format. The apex of his reputation came with his second book, North of Boston, a highly coherent and cleverly constructed collection. Following a tepid reception of his second book, Mountain Interval, a less well-organized effort, and a resulting decline in his reputation, he returned to a permanent place of prominence in American letters with New Hampshire.;The theme that dominates the poems of New Hampshire is the power of the poetic imagination. With a long, title poem acting as an abstract of sorts, the rest of the volume is divided into parts: fourteen poems of moderate length entitled "Notes," and several dozen brief lyrics entitled "Grace Notes." The "Notes" examine the relationship of the poet to society, the range and parameters of poetic vision, and the necessity of a keen sense of craft. The "Grace Notes" act as addenda to these issues, in the same manner as ornamental notes harmonize with motifs in a musical composition.;There is a well-developed sense of satire in the format and content of New Hampshire when it is viewed in relation to Eliot's The Waste Land. The quasi-scholarly format of "notes," the offering of a quaint, imaginary land of the poet farmer in place of the modern city, and the deconstruction of temporally specific despair make it a clever counterpoint to Eliot's magnum opus.