"Desert Places" Explication

            In Robert Frost’s Desert Places, there is constant imagery. The first stanza describes snow falling in the nighttime and how the ground is almost completely enveloped in snow except for small stubbles of grass that poke through at the top. The denotation of snow is a kind of crystallized precipitation that occurs in the winter time. The connotation of snow could mean both joyful and melancholy. When snow falls, it can mean a sign of elation or happiness or a reminder of holidays or possibly new beginnings. It could also bring youthfulness and feelings of innocence. On the contrary, it could also be a meaning of loss, as in the decay and death and nature surrounding a person. It could mean cold, both in the literal tactile sense and in being harsh and unforgiving. Depending on who could read this poem may interpret the first stanza differently. Personally, I imagine a gloomy picture of the snow falling because of Frost also mentioning that it is nighttime, which could also enforce the feeling of a more bitter cold. 

            The poet describes the forest as having “it” in the first line of the second stanza and that the “it” is all theirs. As the animals stay in the lairs and the narrator is too “absent-spirited” to count them all. The “it” could be defined as loneliness, as in stanza four Frost writes “The loneliness includes me unawares”. This enhances the harsh feeling of snow falling in the forest adding the word loneliness. The meaning of “it” could in fact be loneliness. The animals themselves could also be alone. By using the word “lairs” instead of “home” or “burrow”, it creates an image of a darker place because a lair could conjure up an image of a hiding place or a place of solitude and it does not sound as comforting.  The loneliness is so powerful that it takes the narrator without them being aware of it happening. They even describe themselves as being too “absented-spirited” to notice; literally feeling devoid of their soul.

            The end of the third stanza describes the snow falling as “with no expression, with nothing to express”. This directly correlates with the connotation of snow as snow being seen as devoid of life or blank or empty. This could enhance the feeling that the narrator is trying to evoke throughout the poem-the ever increasing loneliness of the environment around them.

            The narrator tries to prove that he is not affected by the loneliness. Frost writes, “They cannot scare me with their empty spaces”. This proposes questions such who are “They”? and what “empty spaces” are the narrator referring to? “They” could be the loneliness and how it is evoked through nature.  Loneliness can be connected to feeling empty so that could be a further connotation of the word “loneliness”. The last three lines are especially potent because of what Frost is saying. The point that loneliness is so much closer to home than the “desert places” he is surrounded with. When one thinks of a desert, one does not picture snow or trees, but the feeling of emptiness is still apparent and Frost is trying to say that the feeling lies within our minds and that you simply cannot walk away from them.