Writing Samples

Table of Contents

Spirit of the Game: Ultimate Frisbee             page 2

The End of My Generation’s Childhood        page 7

The First Day of Spring                                 page 10

The Game of Baseball                                    page 11

A Proposal to Address Domestic

Violence Against Women in Baltimore          page 13

He Loves Me Now and Forever                    page 19

Emerald Necklace                                           page 20

Isolation in Frost Poetry Through

Natural Imagery and Personal Experience      page 21

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall                             page 28

The Tide Rolls In                                           page 29

Spirit of the Game: Ultimate Frisbee

December 2016

At 6 o’clock, at this time of year, the sun has set almost an hour already and the coldness of November can’t hide among the brightness of the day. Most students are bundled in sweaters, jackets, boots, and scarves, sitting in the warmth of their rooms, Starbucks, or the library. But there are about 35 students who are dressed in shorts and t-shirts, swapping their boots for cleats and their books for frisbees. They gather under the lights on the Diane Geppi-Aikens Field and two-by-two, start throwing their frisbees around and running after them. For two hours every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, Loyola’s Ultimate Frisbee Club prepares for tournaments against other colleges by practicing offense and defense drills, scrimmaging, and sprinting, rain or shine.

Picture this: You are about to start college. You may have been playing the so-called “normal” sports all your life: soccer, baseball, basketball, hockey, track. You might want to continue these sports, but you also want to try something new. And so, you decide to give Ultimate Frisbee a try.

Ultimate Frisbee was founded by a group of high school students in 1968 in Maplewood, New Jersey. The definition of Ultimate Frisbee, as given by USA Ultimate, is “the non-stop movement and athletic endurance of soccer” combined with “the aerial passing skills of football.”  Two teams of seven, sometimes mixed, normally with 4-6 men and 1-3 women, play against each other, both trying to send the frisbee down the field to the opponent’s end zone. The frisbee is turned to the defense if the offense drops it at any point during their attempt. The game is self-officiated among the offsides, and out-of-bounds, while also deciding how many points they will play to, most deciding the winner is the first team to make it to somewhere between 12 and 15 points.

On paper, Ultimate Frisbee seems similar to other sports. The layout of the game is reminiscent of football, the techniques of defense recall the same ideas as in various sports, and the strategy is the same: use the field to trick the defense and move the target to the end zone. There are rules and there are fouls for breaking those rules. There is a winner and there is a loser. But there is one glaring difference, one unique part of Ultimate Frisbee that no other sport has: the spirit of the game.

According to USA Ultimate, the spirit of the game is the name for the central rule of the game, which is that the sport has no referees. Simply put, this rule means that the game is played democratically and each team has a responsibility to call out fouls and discuss the validity of them. But as Ultimate players will quickly find, the spirit of the game is so much more than that.

Co-captains of Loyola’s Ultimate team, Ned and Torrin, explore this idea. To Ned, “the spirt of the game is the overarching theme of honesty” and it is “just how you’re supposed to play the game.” Ultimate does not leave space for players to be dirty. Dishonesty and negativity may work in other sports, but in this no-contact game, this way of playing will only make the player lose the respect of others and ruin the foundation of the game. Torrin adds on, saying that spirit of the game “reflects you as a person...it’s the culture of the game.” Because there are no referees, each team is required to be responsible and respectful to the other, no matter if they are winning or losing. Torrin says that “good players are good and great on and off the field,” for Ultimate holds a high standard for respect and civility.

Club President Grady believes that the spirit of the game is what makes Ultimate “one of the best sports” he has played. He says that this way of playing “challenges each player to be honest and dignified” both while playing the game and also discussing calls. Total honesty is required for all players and when this honesty is shown, a team or player proves their ability to be good people in the test of competition. Player Sean also realizes the vigor of the game and believes that “dispute competition retains the spirit of the game.” The ability for teams to discuss problems between themselves without a referee as a third party, forces players to be respectful and mature in what they say and do.

Each team must look at a situation from both viewpoints and understand not just that they want to rule something in their favor, but also that the game can only be played with honesty and dignity. Due to Ultimate requiring democratic-style play and spirit of the game, Grady realizes that “frisbee has reached a standard of excellence [he has] yet to experience in any other sport.”

Spirit. Every sport has a certain level of spirit that every athlete exemplifies while playing. Ultimate Frisbee is no different, except that its spirit is heightened and intensified. Torrin notices that the culture around Ultimate is “just weird. There’s a little camaraderie...and [players] really really get into it in a way...people don’t get into other sports.” There is an energy on the field and on the sideline that is absent from other sports. The entire team each game is “in each other’s arms, laughing...even when it was intense, we knew when to be serious and when to have fun and they didn’t have to be mutually exclusive things,” Torrin says as he recalls a recent tournament. This balance between seriousness and fun is difficult to find in other sports. But Ultimate allows for flexibility for players to decide how they want to play. As Ned says, players “can be out there every day throwing and really wanting to get better,” but they can also play “to have fun, [as] it’s pretty fun on any level.”

Ultimate Frisbee players?know how to have fun more than any?other group of athletes. It doesn’t?matter if their team is losing or they?are playing poorly, players will?always carry an underlying tone of?fun. This camaraderie builds a?community, and one that is extremely?close and unbreakable. Player Malone says, “frisbee has provided me a network of loving, supportive friends” and player Mary Kate agrees, saying, “the difficulty of the sport along with the intensity of personalities and dedication, brings a uniqueness to my college experience.”

For many sports, being serious and having fun are two different things. But for Ultimate, one almost cannot exist without the other. Ultimate players play to both have fun and win, never sacrificing one for the other. At its core, Ultimate is fun; the competition is added onto a fundamentally simple sport. And this competition is built upon strong leadership, most likely by peers. Both Ned and Torrin emphasize that any player will never be the best, but Ned says this knowledge is “the?reason you keep playing”?for it is “driving and?inspiring.”  Torrin agrees,?adding that a player’s?potential is often hidden,?but he believes that “you?can jump higher and [run]?faster.”  This competition between players of opposite teams and more importantly between individual players against themselves gives the fun of Ultimate a meaning. No one will ever be the best and every one can continue push farther, which Torrin believes is “a challenge, but also an incentive.”

The sport itself claims humble beginnings and so does each player of the game. Most players will begin in college, never having done any more than throw a frisbee around once in a while. But the game quickly becomes all that a player stands for and all they want to be a part of. Torrin says, Ultimate is “sort of a metaphor for adulthood,” because most players are just thrown into it and are forced to figure out how to play and play honestly. It is a first step out of people’s comfort zones and the environment never stops asking for more and pushing for athletes to grow within the spirit of the game.

Picture this: You are at the end of your first semester of college. You have been learning to play the weirdest sport you can imagine for the past 3 months. You might wonder how you got here, but it doesn’t really matter. All you know is you’re so glad you gave Ultimate Frisbee a try.

At 8 o’clock, at this time of year, the moon has brightened the sky for hours and the coldness of December sneaks into the end of November. Most students here at Loyola are full from their dinners, warm from long showers, and wide awake from their most recent naps. But there are 35 students who are hungry, dripping with sweat, giving one last push on the last play of the scrimmage. The lights go out in an instant on the Diane Geppi-Aikens Field and side-by-side, each player walks blindly towards the middle of the field. For two minutes every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, Loyola’s Ultimate Frisbee Club huddles together, smiling and laughing as they each put their hands in the middle and shout their cheer in unison, rain or shine.

The End of My Generation’s Childhood

October 2016

At four years old in the winter of 2002, at seven years old in the fall of 2004, and seven other times in my nineteen-year-long life, I saw a Boston sports team win the Lombardi Trophy, the Commissioner’s Trophy, the Larry O’Brien Trophy, and the Stanley Cup. For the past decade and a half, I, along with every Bostonian in my generation, now at the end of their high school careers or in the midst of their college careers, have seen time after time, the almost endless wins of our city’s teams.

At nineteen years old, this generation of winning and winning is beginning to end. It’s not about to end because our four teams are struggling; on the contrary, the Red Sox were one of the final four teams in baseball, and the New England Patriots have started another dominant season. It is the end of this generation of winning because the children, who were woken up in the middle of the night to screaming parents when the Red Sox broke the curse of the Bambino, are now legal adults and well on their ways to becoming the city’s newest workers. It has been more than an entire generation since Tom Brady began his Hall of Fame Career.  It has been a generation-long of David Ortiz, our beloved Big Papi, dominating the baseball diamond. It has been a generation since Boston wondered when their beloved teams might start winning again.

The Celtics and Bruins have recently slipped from their high rankings. Kevin Garnett and Ray Price have announced their retirements. Tom Brady is reaching the end of his career. And now, David Ortiz’s career officially ended, causing me to think about the amazing feats I have seen in my lifetime and what could happen to the city of champion in the future. And while there is always hope of a new reign of success: Boston sports are in the midst of changing eras.

I am honestly not the biggest sports fan; I am certainly not even close. I had to look up the names of every trophy except the Stanley Cup, and I am not like my two brothers, who can list off statistics and facts from the past few decades of every sport and player. I cannot say I have religiously watched every team; I am far from it, only watching playoff and championship games and only recently watching the regular seasons of football and baseball. But like every citizen of Boston, I have felt endless pride in my city and its teams when we wear our jerseys, watch celebratory parades, and laugh off the shrewd comments of Yankees, Giants, and Lakers fans. My childhood, like the childhoods of my brothers, friends, and classmates, has been defined by Boston championships. I look back to the early 2000s and up to 2015 when a fondness and happiness that far exceeds the feelings I have towards even my high school prom, my Irish step competitions, and my acceptance into college. Those moments are not any less important to me as they will of course stay with me for the rest of my life. I look back at them with a full heart and pride, but driving to Dick’s Sporting Goods at midnight on a school night with my mom, brothers, and sister, will take the cake. There’s something about walking into that store with every other ecstatic person and picking out my newest t-shirt. There’s something about sharing the same bliss and pride as every Bostonian that reminds me that we’re connected.

The championships we have won have brought together Boston in times when we needed it most—in 2002, after 9/11 and in 2013, after the Boston marathon bombings. The championships define each year, allowing us to think about our pasts in certain periods based on each championship.

And now, at nineteen years old, this past year has made me realize that I’m no longer a child, and six weeks into my college life, I know that my life has officially shifted. I’m no longer in Boston and won’t be during potential championship games; I’m in Baltimore, where I’m one of a small handful of Boston fans who now have to stick together against the rival teams’ majority.

Things have changed. And by the time my generation’s out of college, starting our new careers and lives, who knows where Boston sports teams will stand? All we know is that we in at the beginning of a change—it could be good; it could be bad. All we know is that the next generation and the many that follow will only hear of the past decade and a half as stories told by their parents of when they were kids. We will be those parents, and luckily for us, our stories will end in trophies and confetti, unlike our parents whose stories ended in tears and disappointment. And hopefully, the next many generations of Boston kids will not know the feeling of sitting on a couch after a major loss, rather, I hope they know the surprise of being shaken awake with the joy of another Boston championship like all 17-21 year-old Bostonians have been blessed to know for our entire childhoods. I hope that I can wake my children up with the news that a Boston sports team is about to win a championship. I hope that I can buy my children t-shirts at midnight and see them walk off to school the next day with them proudly on. I hope that even if I don’t live in Boston in the future, that my children will still root for them and that our home can be filled with the joy and nervous excitement as Boston wins again.

The First Day of Spring

January 2017

On a day like today, we celebrate.

It’s when a girl becomes a woman

And she starts to live and bloom.

It’s when a girl becomes alone

And she learns to love and jump.

It’s when a girl learns to breathe

Without anyone’s help.

But on a day like today, we warn her

Of the ways a girl can get hurt,

When a man can come and suddenly

Take away all that she has,

When he grabs her and ruins her,

Lets her bloom fall to pieces,

And traps her in his tight grasp.

It’s the first day of spring,

But she doesn’t feel the warmth around her.

She’s cold and lonely and scared inside.

She let him in, got tricked into thinking

He was a special one like the stories told her.

But they lied and now she’s lying

Alone, naked, under bloodied and bruised blankets.

It’s the first day of spring

But it was the last night of winter.

And he trapped her inside the cruel howls

With only a window to the springtime.

So she lays hidden in the mess he made

Because she fell too far

On her first day of spring.

The Game of Baseball

October 2018, written for Newcastle University’s student newspaper, The Courier

As an American studying in England, I expected certain things to be different such as phrases, traditions, and lifestyles. But one that I didn’t expect to make as much a difference to me was the lack of baseball.

I can understand why I’d miss baseball while in England for two reasons: 1. I worked as a tour guide at the oldest ballpark in America, Fenway Park, which stands at 106 years old, and is home to the Boston Red Sox. And 2. September and October are the most exciting and important months in baseball, with the end in the World Series.

Growing up, I wasn’t much of a sports fan and even now, I’m not a die-hard fan. But because of the past two summers working in a ballpark, I’ve learned to appreciate and enjoy the history and present of baseball.

To my new British friends, baseball is a foreign concept. But the game itself is quite similar to rounders. The goal is to hit the ball around a diamond-shaped field in order to score runs and to prevent the other team from doing so. There are nine defensive players on the field. There are four bases at each corner of the diamond and a large grass outfield. There’s no time limit, rather nine innings can often last three, four, or more hours. For some, this slow pace is painful to watch, as it can end with a score of 1-0 as often as the runs can be in the teens.

But for others the necessity of every single pitch creates a unique atmosphere. It feels similar to football, with emotions deep and intense.

In the 2011 film Moneyball, Brad Pitt’s character, Billy Beane, famously says “how can you not be romantic about baseball?” All sports tug at your heartstrings; all sports break hearts and yet, make golden memories, too. Baseball’s no different, and does so even more. The slower pace creates long-lasting effects on the big moments. A season that’s 162 games, from April to October, creates endless chances for historic moments. There’s something about watching a 3-4-hour game just for that one homerun, diving catch, strike out. One moment can define not only a game or season, but for so many, a lifetime.

And while these moments are often positive, there always has to be someone on the other side. When one team wins the World Series, there’s always another with broken hearts. As much as baseball lifts you up, it can tear you down. But that’s the beauty of sports, and baseball’s built on this paradox. Baseball is meant to break your heart one season, just to revive it the next. It’s a rollercoaster ride. It’s made so that that game isn’t over until the very last pitch is thrown. It leaves you with hands clenched, heart pounding, just so you can jump up in joy as you watch the white, red-stitched ball begin to fly at the crack of the bat and land over the fence.

A Proposal to Address Domestic Violence Against Women in Baltimore

April 2017

*Sources cited in academic version

The outside of a house could look perfect with a last name on a door and curtains on the windows, with flowers and paint, with chairs on the porch around a table. But the inside could very well be a different picture. There’s the silence and darkness of a woman surviving on threats, cruelty, and the power of a man. Domestic violence is often hidden because society sees home as one of the safest places. But for too many women who are victims of domestic violence, home is one of the worst places. Their husbands or boyfriends, while they are their most intimate partners, are also their most threatening. And almost always, the abuse is hidden. While awareness of the crime has grown, we still need to take major steps in order to decrease the number of women affected by domestic violence.

Domestic violence, as defined by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), one that is widely accepted as a coherent and complete definition,

Domestic violence is the willful intimidation, physical assault, battery, sexual assault, and/or other abusive behavior...by one intimate partner against another. It includes physical violence, sexual violence, threats, and emotional abuse...One constant component of domestic violence is one partner’s consistent efforts to maintain power and control over the other.

This definition covers a broad amount of abuse and therefore, does not forget any kind of abuse. This specific, yet general definition allows for domestic violence victims protection and lets others see that violence is more than just physical. A definition of domestic violence is only a recent development, because “it was not until the 1970s with the rise of the feminist movement, that the issue of domestic violence began to receive deserved attention” and no longer “went?unnoticed”. Even before then, laws stated at violence towards wives from husbands was acceptable because “the husband has to answer for his wife’s behavior”; and beating was thought “reasonable”. Finally, in the late 20th century, women began to speak out against domestic violence and society’s acceptance of it crumbled. Bills against domestic violence began flooding local and federal government offices and the first laws were passed in 1980 and “by 1989, all fifty states and the District of Columbia had civil protective order statutes”. From these dates to the present time, domestic violence prevention and protection has increased.

There are at least two people involved in these situations: the abuser and the survivor, or victim. The abuser, according to the University of Michigan’s resource page on domestic violence, is “the individual who is inflicting the abuse”. They define survivor, or victim as “the individual who is being targeted for abuse” through coercive behavior, which is “force [of survivor, or victim] to comply through pressure, threats, or physical restraint” from his or her abuser. If taken to extreme measures, intimate partner violence (IPV) can result in murder, which is sometimes given the term “femicide”. A relationship becomes unhealthy when one person attempts to gain power by taking control through fear and threats and if it gets that far, violence.

Nationally, intimate partner violence accounts for about 15% of violent crimes. And in Maryland, in 2013, 16,817 crimes were reported, not to mention the many cases that are still hidden. There is currently a high statistic that 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have or will experience violence from a partner in their lifetimes, but those numbers can be even more.

According to the Census Bureau, domestic violence cases have declined 67% from 1994 to 2013. And while this statistic shows great improvement, domestic violence is still a serious issue. Awareness that domestic violence occurs and is a serious crime has grown and should continue to do so. People should be taught about the warning signs of domestic violence. These signs can include, but are not limited to, isolation of the victim from family and friends, bruises, attempts to cover injuries, manipulation of victim, intimidation, and control by abuser of money, children, or other parts of the victim’s life shared with his or her abuser. Schools can teach their students first the rights and wrongs of how to treat people, and then as they get older and can understand what abuse means through warning signs. Churches can also teach through their sermons what is and is not acceptable in intimate relationships. Places of employment can look out for warning signs in their workers and also post information on domestic violence to educate their employees.

Building up awareness can help in two ways. First, a victim of domestic violence may not even realize that she is being abused. If she is taught at an early age what a healthy relationship is, then she is less likely to fall trapped underneath an abuser. But if she does end up in that situation, then knowing the definition of domestic violence and that her relationship fits that description. Second, friends, family members, coworkers, neighbors, among others will be able to also see the warning signs and help intervene. In many situations, victims are either unable or too scared to get help for themselves, but if other people can see the situation from the outside and step in, then the victim may be able to get help easier. Awareness is a pretty simple, relatively cost-effective way to improve the issue of domestic violence. A small budget to make posters, videos, or social media posts can spread quickly and effectively to many groups of people and communities.

A second step that natural follows awareness is better laws that give more protection to victims and enforce stricter punishments and penalties on abusers. Since the 1980s, more and more laws have been created and the detail of what is domestic violence has increased. Current laws in Maryland are capable of filing protective orders and peace orders, which help victims legally force their abusers to refrain from contact with them. Nationally, there have been many laws put in place throughout the past few decades to protect not only women, but also families and anyone who is a survivor of domestic violence. Most notably is the 1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that Congress passed that allowed for law enforcement to be able to get involved in domestic violence situations and treat the actions of an abuser as a crime. As the years went on, the flaws and loopholes of laws were discovered, leading to even more laws and more protection.

But there are still no laws that completely protect victims from what are legally called “third-parties”. For example, an abuser can be required to move out of the couple’s house, but he can still have control over plumbing, heat, and phones by disconnecting them. These actions will force the victim to lose necessities to live and therefore still suffer from the control of her abuser. Laws need to be made in order to protect victims even more. There should be no loopholes for abusers to be able to continue their control of their victims. The problem with third-parties can resolved by a victim’s protective order and the abuser’s restraining order clearly stating what each person can and cannot do. Proving that one still lives in the house should be required as well to protect those who actually do live there. This change will protect victims of domestic violence from becoming homeless or still be under the control of their abuser.

And laws should even help abusers. Counselors should also work with abusers to help them realize the wrongness of their actions and teach them what a healthy relationship looks like. This part of the issue would fall under prevention as abusers be more likely to not continue abuse towards future partners. Laws should require that abusers “be mandated to go through treatment program which should be long enough to teach the batterer to respect human beings”. With this solution, laws would not only protect victims, but also help abusers find the right path again and prevent potential future instances of domestic violence. Help for abusers is just as important as for victims because they need to be able to stop the cycle of their actions and fix their own lives after the abuse.

In Maryland specifically, “there’s no separate crime of domestic violence,” instead an abuser’s crime would be stalking or assault, and not “indicate that when the crimes were committed, [that] they were...domestic violence related”. This lack of enforcement allows for domestic violence abusers the ability, through loopholes, to own firearms and potentially use them against their victims. In a 2015 news editorial, The Washington Post found that out of “126 convicted domestic violence offenders” only one was banned from access to firearms. A solution to this issue would be two changes in laws: one, ‘domestic violence offender’ must be included in an abusers list of crimes, and two, it must be illegal for those with domestic violence offenses to have any access to firearms. Federal laws state that anyone who has committed a felony, has a protective order against him, or has committed a domestic violence offense, he cannot legally obtain a gun. But if domestic violence does not proceed misdemeanor in his file then he may still be able to obtain a gun. Therefore, the specificity of crimes involving domestic violence must be increased and clear to law enforcers and community leaders.

A third step would to increase the use of the domestic violence survivor assessment. The assessment of someone’s situation and options. This assessment aims to “increase effectiveness of survivors’ safety practices, increase survivors’ knowledge of the ‘healthiness’ of the relationship or lack thereof, increase the effectiveness of survivors’ coping skills with life situations, rebuild survivors’ self-identity, increase survivors’ self-sufficiency, and decrease survivors’ trauma and stress symptoms”. The assessment attempts to move victims along through the five states of help, which are “committed to continuing” the abusive relationship, “committed but questioning” the abuse, “considering and preparing for change,” “breaks away,” and “establishes new life—apart or together”. The steps of the assessment make sense and follow the natural order of abusive relationships. This assessment can be run through hospitals, nonprofits, and community organizations. The program would require trained workers, such as doctors, counselors, and law enforcement. Just for medical costs to help victims alone, it costs nearly $6 billion each year nationally, while in total it costs $8.3 billion with productivity loss.

With additional aid to domestic violence victims a large portion of the $8.3 billion lost each year could be saved. The average state bill costs between $717 and $890 to become a law. While this does seem like a large sum of money, it is almost nothing compared to the amount of money the country loses every year. Stricter laws can be relatively easy created, therefore leading the way for less domestic violence. Along with these laws, programs, such as non-profits, depending on their sizes could cost anywhere between $125 million and $650 million each year. Altogether, domestic violence prevention attempts cost roughly $4 billion each year, a tiny portion of the country’s multi-trillion-dollar budget. And finally, awareness would generally occur in schools, hospitals, and community buildings. This budget could be flexible, depending on how people spread awareness.

And so while domestic violence is an issue that has been around for centuries and would be nearly impossible to end completely, there are ways to decrease its severity. Today, roughly one quarter of all people suffer from domestic violence, but with better laws, more awareness, and more programs to help victims. With a more welcoming and helpful society, domestic violence victims will be able to overcome their suffering.

He Loves Me Now and Forever

May 2016

He loves me now and forever;

I can tell in his kiss.

Though you think so, he will never

Leave me never in the dirt.

I love him more than anything;

I can show in this song,

Which through high and thick walls I bring

My love I want to give.

We love each other to the end.

I can put all my trust

In his desire to defend

The love you won’t allow.

I love him more and more each day

And our two hearts want

To live together ‘til we’re gray,

And then love even more.

He loves me now and forever.

I can tell you this much—

With his love, I will never

Be left here in the dirt.

Emerald Necklace

March 2015

He gave it to her on her 23rd birthday

With a promise he would marry her.

He put it around her neck, let it fall across the hills of her bones

And gave her a kiss as her spun her around.

She wore it to her wedding with a pretty dress.

The green shined down the aisle with her smile.

She let her tears fall, they landed on the rock,

Sliding down, filling the cracks,

And they kissed with the necklace in between them.

They bought a big piece of land, a great big house.

They painted the walls and their hearts green,

And laid the necklace on the fireplace.

So they could sit together, reading, talking, passing their green nights on.

A beautiful baby girl was born

One Thursday night with the necklace waiting for her downstairs.

Her cries, their smiles poured green over her,

And morning rose a little brighter than before.

The next eight years brought cracks in the stone—

Lost babies, no money, storms, fights—

The necklace gathered up dust, buried

After years on not being worn and danced in,

After years of misplacing its love and shine.

But cracks can be filled and they disappear.

The two of them with their first baby,

Live in happiness and green again with flowers all around and dust gone.

They dance every night in the emerald light.

They dance away the years and days

And slow themselves down,

To sit in rocking chairs side by side

With their emerald hugging them as the clock ticks on by.

And one night the necklace opens.

The green light shines brighter than it has the 60 years before.

And then blows out one last time,

As the roses and weeds cover it.

Isolation in Frost Poetry Through Natural Imagery and Personal Experience

April 2018

*Sources cited in academic version

           Loneliness and isolation are two common, often related, human experiences that reach all walks of life and different periods of life. Poet Robert Frost writes of the emotion and experience in countless poems throughout his career. Losing a child, moving around often, and struggling to gain recognition as a poet, gave Frost enough knowledge of loneliness to write effective, timeless, and humane poetry on the subject. He writes of the theme, not just in terms of his own experiences, but in the manner of more general, relatable situations, relying on human nature and natural landscapes to relay a strong, universality on loneliness. In multiple poems, and throughout all of his poetry collections in his career, Frost returns to the theme of isolation and loneliness through human disconnection and the darkness of nature.  Both show Frost’s ability to create a tangible description of a misunderstood and difficult emotion and also share the commonness of such an emotion through relatable imagery and experiences.

           Frost’s career during the American modernist period in the early to mid 1990s, began as one on the outside of his peers’ company. He struggled to get works published and ended up finding early success in Britain’s poetry market before receiving some attention from an American audience. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse favored Frost’s work in the late teens, publishing his poem “Snow” in November 1916 as one of America’s first introductions to Frost’s nature imagery and metaphorical strength. This magazine published on Frost once more, in January 1917, when writing a review on one of his most famous poetry collections, Mountain Intervals. Poetry, though, often published many poems from one or two writers in each issue, with a handful of others mixed in. They published famous modernist names, such as William Carlos Williams and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Frost only received that one poem publication, and while disappointing because of his significance and legacy, Poetry was important in many poets’ careers for publishing their early works and growing their audience to reach further success elsewhere, which in Frost’s case was many poetry collections. One of his most famous poems, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” was also published, later on, in 1923, in The New Republic, a larger, more well-known magazine. At this point in his career, Frost gained a larger audience and was highly regarded. One other major magazine publication was an advertisement of his North of Boston poetry collection in 1915 before the publication of “Snow” in The Little Review. This lack of magazine publications for Frost ties into his major, recurring theme of loneliness and isolation in his poems. In real life, Frost experienced professional loneliness because he did not exactly fit into the modernist mold. He focused on nature and human emotion in a simplistic style that did not completely reject or flip traditional ideas as his peers’ works did. Instead, Frost wrote how he knew best—not worrying about whether it was modernist enough. And in his numerous poetry collections, he powerfully and successfully paints realistic images of human life and experience that resonates with the average human. His simple way with words allows for almost anyone the ability to read and understand his poetry and his fearlessness to explore deep, undesired human emotions that reach all people in one way or another. In many of his poems and collections, loneliness and isolation tie everything together, as seen and analyzed in the subsequent selected five poems. 

           In “An Old Man’s Winter Night,” Frost’s setting is a small cabin hidden by the darkness, a classic scene for loneliness. The dark night becomes a metaphor for loneliness, and Frost uses description of the night along with the old man’s thoughts while alone to convey a story of how deliberating and powerful loneliness can become. The man’s age is as much a focus as his loneliness, almost like they are not mutually exclusive and rely on one another. The old man’s age was what “brought him to that creaking room” and made him “a light…to no one but himself”. He is surrounded simply by four walls but outside of his small house, everything is surrounding him and as Frost continues to write about the snow, darkness, and forest, seems to wrap around the old man tighter and tighter. There seems to be no one in his life anymore and he is living solely for himself with isolation dragging him down and becoming stronger. The old man focuses on his surroundings as if to forget his loneliness in a desperate attempt. English professor and writer, Judith Oster writes that

the hollowness and the emptiness of the place and the life are reinforced by the auditory image of resonating sounds and further dramatized by repetitions within the poem—words and structures that echo one another: ‘Scared’ appears three times, ‘light,’ ‘moon,’ ‘keep,’ ‘night,’ ‘one man,’ ‘clomping,’ and ‘what kept him’ twice. 

Oster explains that Frost’s repetition brings out the old man’s loneliness even more, as it imitates the thought process of someone who is lonely; it is almost like counting the seconds on the clock, or noticing only a few parts of one’s surroundings. Frost successfully evokes a strong feeling of loneliness over his readers through his common, cold, and dark imagery.

           In “Acquainted with the Night,” loneliness is connected to night, personifying it to create another character besides the speaker, yet reveal the lack of other human presence and omniscient power of loneliness. Frost relies heavily on the first person as half of the poem’s fourteen lines begin with the word “I”, showing that the speaker has a role in his experience with loneliness. While Frost continues the theme of night as loneliness, he does not use solely nature to describe the experience. Instead, Frost’s setting is a city—seemingly opposite to loneliness. But Frost’s lack of nature makes loneliness more present. Being in nature oftentimes implies that one will be alone and so loneliness itself might not be far away. But a city setting by definition means that no one is alone, and therefore should imply that one is not lonely. Frost shows that it does not matter where one is, loneliness can hit at any time and a city can often be the loneliest setting, particularly at night when it is dark and quiet. Frost takes loneliness a step farther than modernist poets before him do because he claims that he is “acquainted” with it, showing that he knows it well—as if a familiar face. Frost intensifies the personification of loneliness by describing “far away an interrupted cry” that breaks the silence but reminds him that he is alone, everything around him is quiet, and he is nothing but lonely. Furthermore, Frost explores the endlessness of loneliness—he describes the time of night as “neither wrong nor right,” showing that loneliness creates confusion. He freezes the individual in one time and place that seems impossible to break, just as loneliness is an endless sphere to turn away from.

           Frost’s use of dark and ambiguous language is mastered in “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening,” a poem focusing yet again on loneliness, but this time as something that is a choice and at the narrator’s point in life, a wanted one. The setting of the woods in the poem creates an ominous atmosphere where, once the speaker goes into them, is most certainly alone and even invisible to the rest of the world. The snow creates a world of white around the speaker and as the sun is setting in the evening he is reaching these woods, the contrast of a white ground and black sky creates a lonely, isolated feeling. The man’s desire is to “watch [the] woods fill up with snow” during “the darkest evening of the year,” suggesting that he is purposely isolating himself from his village and creating a border between himself and anyone or anything else. The last stanza in particular loses any charm or light that the first three had a bit of. Frost writes

           The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

           But I have promises to keep,

           And miles to go before I sleep,

           And miles to go before I sleep.

This stanza shows that the speaker has a choice to make—whether to continue on his way and remain isolated or to go back to his responsibilities. The last two lines even suggest that the isolation the speaker is looking for is death and he then realizes that he needs to continue on instead. Here, unlike in the past two poems, the speaker has the power to isolate himself or not. Frost explores the odd human wish to be alone and avoid anything other than darkness and quiet.

           While these former three poems focus on loneliness through nature imagery, particularly the nighttime, Frost also evokes loneliness through human relationships in many of his poems. In “Home Burial,” he studies a relationship and shows how miscommunication, a difference of emotional reaction, and grief can make one feel lonely inside what should be one’s closest relationship. The poem’s format is quite modernist itself, even without the subject in mind as it is a conversation between two people with long stanzas of description, and then one or two lines of dialogue for each speaker. Frost has turned what could be a short story into a poem, bringing more power and emotion to the storyline. The husband and wife are both mourning the death of their young son, and have become isolated from one another due to their miscommunication and different emotional reactions to the death. The first line, “he saw her from the bottom of the stairs / Before she saw him,” show the couple physically separated by a staircase and continue to physically mismatch each other, as one is often as a lower level than the other. Their own words are written with large spaces in between them to show the disconnect and misunderstanding. The whole poem “comes to you in an isolated manner, within a pentameter line” as Joseph Brodsky explains, and that “the isolation job is done by white margins framing, as it were, the whole scene, like the silence of the house, and the lines themselves are the staircase.” The staircase holds the entire poem and shows the disunity between the couple while also being a lonely part of the house to begin with. Now, their child’s death comes into play and brings darkness into the lines. They have two very different ways of coping—the husband needs to act and hide his grief, while the wife must let her grief out through heavy emotions. They both realize this disconnect, and while most the poem leaves the two of them separate, the husband steps up to try to rebuild their union and suffer together. He says to his wife, “Tell me about it if it’s something human. / Let me into your grief… / Give me my chance… / its’s come to this, / A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.” His words show his emotion for the first time and he begs to be let in as the only way they can mourn together is if they understood one another and let the other see their vulnerability. Yet their emotions are so deeply forged that by the end of the poem neither is consoled and they only become more separated as the wife begins to leave the house. They both never move on from speaking of themselves, using the words “I” and “you” to show the split between the two that stay past the final dash that with Frost ends the poem. There is still a loneliness in both characters and their isolation is only further intensified as their grief is deepened.

           In “Mending Wall,” Frost once again explores human relationships and how a physical obstacle can isolate people from one another, creating a desire for connection and an inability to overcome this kind of loneliness. In this poem, the speaker and his neighbor build a wall between their properties where they find gaps. They work together oddly to isolate themselves from the other. The speaker observes that “No one has seen them made or heard them made, / But at spring mending-time we find them there,” and so they are seemingly naturally separated from one another. They accept the separation they found and make the obstacle between them even stronger and larger by building up a wall. There is no questioning of why they are doing so, and as Varsika Srivastava suggests, the wall could be “nothing by the gap between the human beings on various aspects—culturally, economically, and socially,” a variety of things that are often rooted in many years of tradition and are not questioned, but rather accepted as just the way things are. The wall, either as a metaphor or reality, dictates what occurs between the neighbors and they go on as if they have no power to change their isolation until the very end. And when his neighbor says “Good fences make good neighbours,” the speaker wonders “Why do they make good neighbors?” But it is too late to ask this question, as the speaker and his neighbor are too isolated from each other and settled in this situation that any change would be difficult and long in the making. Frost tackles the separation of groups of people due to ideology by focusing on just two individuals. He creates a universal experience and common thoughts to show how isolation can be purposely made and difficult to overcome due to comfort and commonality.

           While Frost is not necessarily the face of modernist poetry, he remains in the company of his peers in the modernist era with the right to truly be considered one. He explores emotions in ways that were never done before his poetry by accepting darkness and loneliness as a part of the human experience. He never shies away from it, and learns of the complexity of isolation and loneliness through many parts of human life. He connects classic forms of poetry and imagery of nature to create new brutally honest and dark poetry that reaches beyond the little cabins and woods he sets them in. Frost created poetry that gets to the root of human life and emotion and simple and relatable, yet strong and moving words.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

April 2017

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

Please this time tell me

I’m the prettiest of them all.

I can’t take another image of ugly.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

I don’t really care if this is a lie—

I’m the prettiest of them all.

Please tell me it was worth a try,

Mirror, mirror on the wall.

Those lines are so big,

I’m not the prettiest of them all.

I could really use a hug.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

I’m not the prettiest of them all.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

I’m not the prettiest of them all.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

I want to break you.

I’m prettiest of them all.

If only it wouldn’t break me.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

Don’t lie to me so much.

I’m not the prettiest of them all,

But don’t make me see the truth.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

I’m not flawless;

I’m not the prettiest of them all.

I don’t care what you think.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

I’m the prettiest of them all.

Please don’t let me break inside you.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

I’m going to beat your power.

I’m the prettiest of them all,

Because I can be brave.

The Tide Rolls In

August 2018

The storm is coming closer, faster,

Bringing heavy waves,

Dark clouds, pounding rain.

But you won’t leave,

Not until you get to him,

Even if he is the storm.

And even as the tide rolls in,

Covering all traces of life,

All the footprints you followed.

And he keeps looming down,

Closer, louder, darker, faster.

You can’t run away anymore

As the tide rolls in.

It started with a clear blue sky,

Just a small breeze, smooth ripples.

Then slowly, then all at once,

The waves crashed, the sky black,

Thunder roared, lightning hit

As the tide rolled in.

The tide rolls in.

You can’t get away.

Fight against it.

Struggle until you break free,

And the storm loses strength

As the tide rolls in.