Mountain Interval by Robert Frost

Mountain Interval is the third volume of poems published by Robert Frost. While I am admittedly not previously very familiar with Frost’s poetry (excluding some two or three poems that are actually within this volume) and thus do not have much else to compare these poems to, I am inclined to say that these poems in particular focus much on life, choices and consequences and serve together as a means of reflection and in many cases means of advice in the constant quest of life. Right off the bat this theme is established with the first, and perhaps Frost’s most famous poem, The Road Not Taken. Within this poem, many of the messages that are further touched on in the volume are touched on and highlighted. This poem draws attention to the natural human responses to challenges and the means by which we make the decisions that we do and more specifically focuses on there being a “right” or “better” choice.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Through this passage it is evident the sort of tone that the rest of the poem carries and furthermore that the rest of the collection carries about challenges in life, the choices that we make and of course then the implications that we face because of those challenges. The Home Stretch, the fifth poem in the series, the poem focuses on what has become of their (the husband and wife) lives and what the future will hold. The poem has a tone similar to a geometric compass in the way that it depicts the past as a fixed center of which the future is dictated to revolve around. In other words the position or choices of the past limit and arrange the future. The piece has somewhat of a gloomy tone focusing on some of the bleak realities of life and its senselessness. This poem is the second longest of the poems in the volume (just behind Snow, the second to last poem) and is also probably the closest to free verse out of all of the poems.
The majority of the poems are much shorter in length and very clearly well structured and with a clear and set form. Putting in the Seed, Range Finding, Meeting and Passing, and The Oven Bird, are even in the form of sonnets.
The final poem in the volume and my personal favorite, The Sound of the Trees, is quite similar to the tone and message of the first poem The Road Not Taken. While the volume in this sense does seem to come full circle it does not come to a clear conclusion or resolution to this issue of making choices and in fact, in comparison to The Road Not Taken, The Sound of the Trees is actually less clear about the choices that should be made and much more vague about the clash of what should be done and what is then actually done in reality.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
The author is comparing people and their decisions and indecisions to those of trees and in this poem essentially does not come to a conclusion. While in The Road Not Taken, the speaker eventually makes a clear and confident choice, this poem is more centered on the inner conflict itself rather than any sort of implied solution that the speaker makes independent of the tree metaphor.
Overall I definitely enjoyed reading this book and the poems within it and would certainly recommend it to anyone. Some of the poems were uninteresting and I especially did not enjoy the lengthy ones, Snow and The Home Stretch. They were overall too wordy and I had to read it several times just to stay focused on what was even going on. The first and last poems were wonderful and the kind of stuff you would find framed and want to put up in your kitchen or living room but a lot of the stuff in the middle could have been done without. Historically I’ve been a fan of true romantic poetry and while some of Frost’s poems certainly fit into this category I did appreciate many of the ones that did not as well. The sonnets in particular were extremely enjoyable to read especially after our activity in class as I now have a much greater appreciation for form poetry. I personally think that Robert Frost should stick to what he’s good at, i.e. short and succinct poetry and give up on the lengthy crap that is just boring and wordy. I am definitely glad to have read this though. A great reading experience and I would recommend it to all.