West-Running Brook

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1928

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form

The poem consists of dialogue between two characters, a husband named Fred and a wife whose name is never given. The premise of the dialogue is revealed in the opening eight lines: The two have gone for a walk along a stream, named the West-running Brook, which is an actual stream just outside the town of Derry, New Hampshire, where Frost and his family lived for a time.

The poem shifts from wife to husband and then back and forth save for a curious and much-debated passage (Lines 24-31) set off by parentheses in which apparently neither character speaks. The speaker may be the overarching voice of the poet. Here the poem introduces the eddy. The parenthetical is in language that clearly is separate from the more conversational diction of the passages in which the husband and wife speak to each other. The language in this parenthetical passage takes the reader into the rushing current of the brook and expounds on the white-water eddy. The passage reflects how the current of the west-running stream negotiates rocks along the bottom of the stream to form a frothy curling white eddy. It offers an elaborate metaphor: The curling white eddy that so clearly runs against the current is compared to feathers from the breast of some great white bird that fleck the surface of the black stream before being driven against the shore where it resembles something like a white scarf along the bank.

This parenthetical places a broad frame around the narrative of the husband and wife. It suggests that their conversation touches upon grander things than walking along a New Hampshire country stream. After all, it is the parenthetical mention of the eddy that inspires the husband to make the lengthy speech (Lines 43-78) that comprise the body of the poem. The parenthetical introduces the kinetics of the eddy that runs counter to the westward running brook. The husband meditates on what the stream means as a potent metaphor for how we must live knowing we must die. The parenthetical may be less a separate speaker and more a component of the husband’s intellect.

Meter

Frost famously dismissed the idea of what other modernists celebrated as free verse, or open verse. For him, poetry that did not abide by the conventional concepts of anticipated rhythm and rhyme was not poetry at all. “West-Running Brook” challenges that premise. Unlike other Frost poems from the period, “West-Running Brook” is more conversational, more like free verse. The lines do not abide any rhyme patterns and match the casual rhythms of two people in conversation.

Although Frost does dispense with end rhymes, the lines themselves are carefully, quietly rhythmic. The lines are for the most part iambic pentameter; that is each line is divided into five two-unit beats, the first stressed, the second unstressed syllables, the familiar da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM. The poem has some variation to avoid monotony and reveals how everyday conversation approximates the elegant rhythms of more obvious poetic meters. The meter is not intrusive; the rhythm is like the subversive energy of the white eddy itself. It commands attention only if carefully, diligently observed. The poem lacks the predictability of rhyming and seems to flow like the brook’s current— carelessly, effortlessly. The poem’s carefully metered rhythm, however, asserts the contrary: The aesthetic sublime inherent in the poet’s craft.

Voice

The poem is a dramatic dialogue. Two characters speak to each other. Because there is no overarching narration to set a scene or to provide insights into the characters of the husband and wife, what each says reveals character. Voice becomes character. The poem does not provide any helpful subtext or commentary. There are no adjectives to help visualize the two, no adverbs to help hear the inflection, the tone of what they say.

Given the lack of such commentary, we are left only with what is said, as if we are reading the script for movie in which we provide the inflection and the tone. However, what each says alone does help define the differences between the two. The wife reveals a kind heart, a generous perspective in that she wants to understand their relationship, how their marriage works when, obviously, they seem to be such different people. She finds a home in the woods, feels the embrace of nature that encourages her to imagine the three of them in some kind of dynamic, a measure perhaps of exactly how alone she feels.

Her husband repudiates her heart, spirit, and gestures toward intimacy. He fancies himself quite the thinker, quite the orator (the wife recognizes all the signs that her husband is about to expound on one of his points). He has no problem assuming the dominant voice in the poem, speaking more than three quarters of the lines. Is she supposed to be listening to him, line after line, one clever observation after clever observation? In spite of his elegant rhetorical touches and matter-of-fact perceptions, he strikes one as a narcissist. He is engrossed in his commentary even as his wife reveals her heartache and longing. Through the voice manipulation in the poem, we understand why the husband is given a name and the wife remains anonymous. She is both there and not there, both relevant and irrelevant to her husband.

Related Titles

By Robert Frost

Study Guide

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