In reading Robert Frost’s poetry, it will be helpful to understand his belief in the redemptive poetic imagination. For Frost poetic imagination is the way of recovering our lost self and finding a “temporary stay against confusion” of the world we live in. Frost does not assert that poetic imagination as a “stay against confusion” is absolute, but he believes only those who are ready to share poetic imagination are equipped with the insight to lead a life of spiritual renewal. This study is to explicate the significance of poetic imagination and to show how Frost’s poetic redemption is focused chiefly on the terrestrial spiritual salvation, not on the heavenly religious redemption. In such poems of labor as “Mowing,” “After Apple-Picking,” and “Unharvested,” Frost presents his belief that labor is both the unfortunate rewards of the Fall and a way of overcoming it. The “dream that labor knows” in Frost’s poems of work is sweet because it is frequently concerned with the spiritual redemption of those who try to harvest reality, which can be expressed in terms of the sweet scents of the harvested apples. We have to, however, lose our worldly self before we can recover our real self and come into the world of poetic imagination. In “Directive” the speaker seeks to lose us and guide us to “lost villages.” where we can be lost enough to find ourselves. The height of this poetic imagination is the height of making metaphor, which is the attempt to marry facts to fictions, matter to spirit, and spirit to matter. The road to the height of poetry is compared to the “ladder road.” This seems to promise eternal salvation by alluding to “Jacob’s ladder” but in reality confirms the limitation of poetic imagination by betraying the fact that the ladder always stands short of heaven. “Ladder road” is a metaphor for poetic imagination as a “momentary stay against confusion.” The speaker in “Directive” advises us at the height to “pull in your ladder road behind you / And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.” This suggests that redemption through poetic imagination is not open to all but exclusive to only those who have been versed in poetic analogy or metaphor. The speaker in “Directive” asks us to drink with the “broken goblet,” which is the metaphor for the container of poetic salvation. The water of life in poetry may end just as a “momentary stay against confusion,” but it will be the wisdom helpful for us to live a life of success in modern age which has lost holy Grail.
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