Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Poetry is the universal language used by the poets to express their ideas in beautiful words. 1 As a universal language, poetry has existed almost in all period. Poetry is a unique medium of communication, it is created in the form of a brief language, and it is differs from other literary works. Etymologically, the word poetry in the Greek comes from ‘poesis’, which means making or creates. In English, poetry is closely with “poet” and “poem”. The word “poet” comes from Greek; which means make or create. In Greek, the word poet means the person who creates through his imagination, a person who almost seems as god or like to god. People who are perspicacious, saints, who was also a philosopher, statesman, teacher, someone who can guess the truth is hidden. 2 Poetry Dutch: poezie, is flow of sense expression out from heart into a language that has rhythmic and a value of beauty. Language used by a poet as a tool to record their surrounding life and described it to a poetry. 3 To some people, 1 Laurence Perrine and Thomas R.A.P.P.,Sound And Sense: An Introduction to Poetry Eight Edition.Orlando : Harcourt Brace College Publisher,1992, p.3 2 Ulysses Ronquilo, Puisi, http:www.definisi dan unsur-unsurnya.htm, 2009. p.1 Accessed on September 20 th ,2010 3 Sapardi Djoko Damono, Susastra 5: Jurnal Ilmu Sastra dan Budaya, Depok: 2007, p.4 poetry is difficult to be understood. This is because the power of language is arranged by concentration of the physical and mental structures that contain very deep meanings and need role of the heart to understand and comprehend the meaning. The strength of poetry is composed by intensification process and process of imagination imagery. In intensification process, the elements of poetry try to reach a problem or something more profound or fundamental, and the imagination process, in which all the elements in the poem has a function to create or build an image or a particular image. The sound and rhyme, the connection of the lyrics lines with other lyrics or a stanza with another stanza, and the choice of words and idioms have function to build a particular imagination or picture that suggests the poem. Then, the imagination gives a whole meaning to a poem. In poetry, the image or picture is a representation of words or something that the writer feels. Imagery is a composite of word that we use for various imaging. The picture can be an object that can be seen, hearing, smell, taste, touch or physical sensation, or feeling of tension and movement in the body. 4 According to Altenberd, imagery is the images of idea or thoughts and language that describe it. Imagery is a tool to understand the poetic, and of course we must understand the word used by the writer. Each imagination expressed by the writers with the right words. 5 4 Richard Ellemann and Robert O’clair, Modern Poems, An Introduction to Poetry: W.W.Norton and Company, Inc, 1999. p.60 5 Ahmad Badrun, Pengantar Ilmu Sastra, Surabaya: Usaha Nasional,2000, p.54 The imagery and figurative language can be seen in a poem written by Robert Frost entitled To Earthward. Robert Lee Frost was born in San Francisco, March 26, 1874 and died in Boston, January 29, 1963. He was one of Americas leading 20th-century poets and a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. An essentially pastoral poet often associated with rural New England, Frost wrote poems whose philosophical dimensions transcend any region. Although his verse forms are traditional - he often said, in a dig at arch rival Carl Sandburg, that he would as soon play tennis without a net as write free verse - he was a pioneer in the interplay of rhythm and meter and in the poetic use of the vocabulary and inflections of everyday speech. His poetry is thus traditional and experimental. 6 Frosts sailed for the United States in February 1915 and landed in New York City two days after the U.S. publication of North of Boston the first of his books to be published in America. Sales of that book and of A Boys Will enabled Frost to buy a farm in Franconia, N.H.; to place new poems in literary periodicals and publish a third book, Mountain Interval 1916; and to embark on a long career of writing, teaching, and lecturing. In 1924, he received a Pulitzer Prize in poetry for New Hampshire 1923. He was lauded again for Collected Poems 1930, A Further Range 1936 and A Witness Tree 1942. Over the years he received an unprecedented number and range of literary, academic, and public honors. 7 6 R.H. Winnick, Biography of Robert Frost, http:www.americanpoem.com.html, 2000. p.1 Accessed on September 20 th , 2010 7 Ibid., p.1 Accessed on September 20 th , 2010 Frosts importance as a poet derives from the power and memorable of particular poems. The Death of the Hired Man from North of Boston combines lyric and dramatic poetry in blank verse. After Apple-Picking from the same volume is a free-verse dream poem with philosophical undertones. Mending Wall also published in North of Boston demonstrates Frosts simultaneous command of lyrical verse, dramatic conversation, and ironic commentary. The Road Not Taken, Birches from Mountain Interval and the oft-studied Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening from New Hampshire exemplify Frosts ability to join the pastoral and philosophical modes in lyrics of unforgettable beauty. 8 Robert Frost said, “Every poem I wrote is figurative in two senses. It will have figures in it, of course; but it’s also a figure in itself- a figure for something, and it’s made so that you can get more that one figure out of it. 9 Referring to the definition above, the writer interested to analyze imagery and figurative language used on two poems by Robert Frost, they are: To Earthward and Wind and Window Flower. 8 Ibid., P.1Accessed on September 20 th ,2010 9 Anonymous, the poetic of Robert frost http:www.frost friend.orgfigurative.html, 2004. p.1 Accessed on September 20 th ,2010

B. Focus of the Study