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American regionalism

In the early twentieth century, numerous American writers who felt frustrated with the willful obscurantism of the avant-garde sought to ground themselves in the regions where they lived and worked. These “regionalist” writers typically expressed a preference for the country over the city. This preference stemmed partly from a belief that rural landscapes were spiritually therapeutic, and partly from a desire to honor the value of colloquial language and homegrown wisdom. Robert Frost is often considered to be a regional poet, since he set much of his writing in the rural landscapes of New England, where he lived for much of his life. When Frost came of age as a poet in the first decade of the twentieth century, he found it difficult to locate himself in a field increasingly driven by experimentalism. Movements like Imagism, though short-lived, had an outsized impact on modern poetry. Hence, when compared to the experimental poetics of modernists like Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, what’s most immediately evident about Frost’s poetry is its accessibility. His speakers habitually use simple language to observe and reflect on the local landscape. Even so, they often give voice to universal truths.

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