Reading "Home Burial" by Robert Frost

“Home Burial” (1914) by Robert Frost is a poem that depicts the emotional tension and complicated relationship between a couple who lost their first child. Frost draws this from his personal experience as he himself lost a child of 4 years in 1900. But he and his wife worked through it as they believed in the power of communication in resolving disagreements and understanding the problems faced by one another. In the poem however, we meet the couple whose marriage is cracked and at the verge of collapse due to their lack of confidence in each other, as they keep their grief bottled up like the wife, Amy, or by hiding behind everyday chores like the husband. 

The wife is seen to have completely given up on the husband as she feels that he is unaffected by the loss of their child as he see him going about and talking about the mundane matters of life which is of little relevance before the grief that she experiences. She refuses to open up to him and to find solace in his company, as she finds him a stranger to her feelings and sentiments. He, on the other hand, does not know how to approach the situation or provide her with the consolation that she needs. 

The poem progresses through dialogues between the husband and the wife, giving more detail to the situation at hand. The husband tries to stop her from going out - he believes to meet someone else - through begging her at first, which turns to threats toward the end, and inevitably fails as she unlatches the door and walks out. The poem provides with the picture of a marriage collapsing at the face of the loss of a child, which is of even more relevance in the present times as people forgets about the one next to you, caught up in their own reality and bustle of life, hardly talking to one another.

The poem with its theme of grief, depicts the reality in all its rawness and is in keeping with the definitions of poetry given by Frost, bringing about wisdom at the end through the feeling which took to thoughts and then words.

Read: "Home Burial" by Robert Frost