Robert Frost identified poetry as "a momentary stay against confusion."Edward Hirsh uses the metaphor of a message in a bottle to describe poetry's relationship to its readers. The poet crafts it, sends it out on unknown waters of time and place, and hopes that it will find readers and generate a response. Then he adds, "the reader completes the poem, in the process bringing to it his or her own past experiences" (1999, p.6).
I love poetry.
Poets, as Jay Parini writes, "articulates thoughts and feelings in ways that clarify both; they hold a mirror of sorts up to the mind if not the world, and their poems reflect our deepest imaginings."
Frost poems are often heralded as truth givers and I love reading his poems again and again! The comfort of great poetry is redemptive. That is not to suggest that it is without pain. Its sentiments are honest, even brutal, but there is peace in approaching suffering with honesty.
Parini said that the important work of the poem is "to unify otherwise fragmented experience."
Frost would accept and amend that credo. His work unifies fragmented experience that others have r"igidly united."
His poetry is full of gifts to its readers.
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