Birches

“Birches” is a quintessential Frost poem, in form, subject, and tone. Drawing on his experience living in rural New England, Frost often took that landscape as the subject of his poems. In “Birches,” it is not a stretch to read the speaker as Frost himself—the meditative, poetic seeker of philosophical truths within the context of the natural world. Critic Carol Frost points out, “For Frost the work of the poet was to collect, like a botanist in the bogs and fields, then to imagine what would suffice for a poem that would be his” (Frost, Carol. “Sincerity and Inventions: On Robert Frost.” 2014. Academy of American Poets). In “Birches,” Frost does exactly this, collecting and presenting complex images of birch trees, and allowing the reader to visualize them in a fresh, stunning way.

Frost’s writing about the natural world parallels the care he takes with the written word. In “Birches,” he describes the young boy, a stand-in or memory for Frost’s own childhood self, as careful in his approach to the birches but also reveling in the joy they provide. Frost might have felt similarly about the role of poetry and the art and craft he took as a writer.