Robert Frosts work focuses on

:
life and landscape of New England.
traditional verse forms and metrics
searching and often dark meditations on universal themes.
language as it is actually spoken
psychologically complex portraits
layers of ambiguity and irony
the actions of ordinary men
dramatic monologues or dramatic scenes come out of a knowledge of
people
verse that uses the rhythms of actual speech
seriousness and honesty
the sorrow with which, sometimes, things are accepted as they are,
neither exaggerated nor explained away
real people with their real speech and real thought and real emotion

The grimness and awfulness, and untouchable sadness of things, both in the
world and in the self, have justice done to them in the poems. . .but no more
justice than is done to the tenderness and love and delight; and everything in
between is represented somewhere too.

Style:
he uses traditional meters like iambic pentameter or other easy-to-read
forms.
He avoids free verse
His poems are heavily metaphoric.
careful placement of the words in each line (syntax)
Pastoral style: he draws his poetry from the world he lived in. Most of his

poems are set in the country, and many of the characters he portrays are
farmers or farmers wives.
Nature and the farmer are used metaphorically to illustrate the human

condition as he saw it.

 He also enjoyed ambiguity- some poems require interpretation of the

personal viewpoint.
He establishes full scenes of a situation and atmosphere realistically

He is described as a metaphysical poet, going beyond the seen to the unseen.

The tension increases between the simple feet and the mystery which surrounds
it, until the total meaning flashes in the final moral.
His poetry raises fundamental questions about life, death and mans destiny in
the universe. His answers, however, are ambiguous.
He seems to see the the universe as ordered by man, nature and God. Man
builds walls, Nature establishes zones and seasons. God constructs a cosmos.
Thus in the broadest sense, man has both divine and natural reasons for his
effort to find or invest patterns and meanings; but only in the broadest sense.

Form:
Poems are usually lyrical: a short poem expressing personal thoughts and
feelings in a melodic way. It is meditative and spoken by a single speaker
about his/her feelings for a person, object event of idea. Its name is
derived from the lyre which accompanied the early poet.
Frost writes in both stanzaic form and continuous structure (no stanzas
and no breaks)
Rhyme schemes are sporadic and he often writes in blank verse-Pentameter (the sound of footsteps or the heartbeat Frost often walked
in silence as he composed his poems) or tetrameter seem to be his meters
of choice.

Frost believed that common verse forms are themselves metaphoric. A blank
verse line lays down a direct line of image, thought or sentiment. The couplet
contrasts, compares or makes parallel figures, ideas and feelings. The quatrain
combines two couplets alternatively. The sonnet (fixed form although Frost

liked to play with the form somewhat) gives a little drama in several scenes to a
lyric sentiment
.

Themes:
Mans isolation in the universe or alienation from his environment
existence, nature, and each other
The beauty and harshness of nature nature as indifferent to man
Humanity and the construction and deconstruction of barriers how they
hinder and aide us
Human limitation how humanity cannot come to terms with the
universe and nature as part of it but that we should not necessarily be
disillusioned by this
Extinction and death - often illustrated through sleep in the human world
Satisfaction self approval/acceptance through the New England work
ethic often shown through the harvest or other responsibilities in the
face of an uncertain universe
Self discovery whether metaphysically or the mundane
Love human, nature without it, life is bleak to console and provide
hope