More Frost

Wow, it's been a long time since last I posted. Life interferes too much with the reading of poetry. I'm now reading mainly at night before sleep and only Frost. Alternating two books is unrealistic at this point. That said, I've been finding this collection of Frost a curious read. His earlier work, pre-New Hampshire, is so heavily story-telling that I wonder if in this day of creative nonfiction he would have opted for that genre. Or since these stories are almost always told through the conversation of two people, perhaps he longed to be a dramatist. Was he wanting imitate Shakespeare by mingling poetry and drama? Or converting the dramatic monologue in poetry past into the dramatic dialogue? These stories are quaint and enjoyable to those with an interest in rural life and history but I don't consider them exceptional poems. I'm just starting to enter his more lyrical phase and am hoping to find more poems that move me with more than mild charm, and that charm primarily due to subject matter. "To Earthward" was worth reading twice but strikes me as rather twisted and subdued within the form.