Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it – it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less –
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars – on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
In Robert Frost’s poem “Desert Places”, he uses the modernist era theme of alienation and self-consciousness. The poem starts by talking about a field that is getting covered by falling snow. Frost uses the theme of alienation when he states, “The loneliness includes me unawares. And lonely as it is, that loneliness” (Frost 8-9) He then moves on to talk more about how he is lonely. Frost says that he has nothing to express, and he compares his loneliness to the blanket of white snow. The modernist theme of self-consciousness is used throughout the last part of the poem. Frost states, ” I have it in me so much nearer home, To scare myself with my own desert places” (Frost 15-16), which implies that he is seperated from others.
Once again, Frost is telling a story regarding himself. The themes of alienation and self consciousness were evident near the end of the poem when he reflected on himself. Frost uses the pronoun “I” in most of the poem. This sticks with the common Modernist theme of self consciousness, as the poem is just a reflection of Frost’s inner thoughts and feelings. Frost was admired for, ” creating conventional forms and meters in modernist poetry” (Belasco and Johnson), which can be seen when by his structure of the poem.