There is a lot more to be said about Frost's life than will fit in one of these small articles, so we will probably return to him fairly often. For today's discussion, it is important to know that he was a New England farmer around the turn of the century, and that he became the best-known American poet of this century.

A friend once told me that she thought today's poem, The Death of the Hired Man, was more like a short story than a poem. She was wrong, and it's useful to look at how Frost uses some conventions of poetry to make this vignette memorable.

First, it is written as blank verse: 5-footed, mostly iambic lines, a form used at least since Elizabethan times to move a story along. Blank verse, especially in Frost's hands, is still musical, but the lack of rhyme directs the reader's attention to the narrative rather than the individual lines.

Second, he makes use of the techniques of verse drama. The action unfolds through the words of the people living it. This can be tricky, especially when the actors have to say something in the poet's voice, but Frost brings it off very well. The lines

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there,  / They have to let you in." "I should have called it  / Something you somehow haven't to deserve."

are the heart of the poem, and it is just barely possible to imagine Warren and Mary speaking them. These lines probably would not work in prose dialog.

Third, Frost makes use of the poet's license to leave things to the reader's imagination. He can suggest things about the evening, about Silas, even about the relationship of the farm wife and her husband, and we are satisfied, even eager, to fill in the details ourselves. In effect it becomes our story as well as his.