21 pages • 42 minutes read
Robert FrostPutting in the Seed
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1916A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
“Putting in the Seed” rhymes ababababcdcdee and the meter is iambic pentameter, meaning there are five iambs (an iamb is a two-syllable foot where an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable) per line. There are only three feet where the meter varies. First, Line 6 begins with a stressed (or accented) syllable followed by an unstressed syllable: mín • gled, which is a trochee, not an iamb. Second, Line 14 begins, “Shouldering,” which is also a trochee. Third, the poem ends “earth crumbs” (Line 14): Here are two stressed syllables in a row, also known as a spondee.
Even with these three irregularities, the meter is remarkably consistent. Most iambic pentameter poems of this length have more than three moments of metrical variation. The regularity of the meter in “Putting in the Seed” is suggestive of the trance-like devotion with which the speaker plants. The meter is largely uninterrupted because the speaker is focused on planting and does not want his work interrupted. Finally, metrical consistency is a hallmark of Frost’s work and many other Frost poems display this regularity.
Sonnet
An English sonnet is a 14-line poem typically written in iambic pentameter that follows the rhyme-scheme abab cdcd efef gg. As discussed in the Form and Meter section above, “Putting in the Seed” is a 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter that follows the rhyme-scheme ababababcdcdee. Thus, it is an English sonnet with two fewer sounds than the traditional (since the sounds of the first four lines are repeated in the second four lines instead of varied).
The rhyme-scheme of the first eight lines of “Putting in the Seed” is suggestive of an Italian sonnet, as well as an English one. Italian poets invented the sonnet form. In an Italian sonnet, the first eight lines always rhyme abbaabba, then the rhyme-scheme of the remaining six lines can slightly vary, but these lines typically rhyme cdecde. English poets, however, had difficulty using the Italian rhyme scheme because fewer words rhyme in English than Italian. Writing eight lines using only two end-sounds was significantly trickier for an English poet than an Italian one, thus the progenitors of the English sonnet changed the rhyme scheme to allow for more sounds. In “Putting in the Seed,” Frost uses the rhyme-pattern of a traditional English sonnet ababababcdcdee, but preserves the number of end-sounds from a traditional Italian sonnet. There are only five different end-sounds in Frost’s poem (abcde) and in a traditional Italian sonnet. In a traditional English sonnet, however, there are seven different end-sounds (abcdefg).
Early sonnets of both the Italian and English variety were love poems—Italian poet Petrarch wrote sonnets of love and devotion to Laura, and William Shakespeare wrote English sonnets of love and devotion to a fair boy and a dark lady. After the Renaissance, however, poets quickly began to use the sonnet to treat other subjects, and by 20th century (when Frost wrote “Putting in the Seed”), poets had used the sonnet form to treat almost every imaginable subject.
“Putting in the Seed” is ostensibly about planting but expresses amorous love for the work. Moreover, the poem is written in response to a domestic partner’s request that the speaker come inside (and the implication is that this partner is present for the duration of the poem), so a more traditional love object is also included in the poem. Like the meter and rhyme scheme Frost uses, the love, adoration, and passion expressed in the poem connect it to the sonnet form.
Dramatic Monologue
In most lyric poems, the speaker talks to themselves. In “Putting in the Seed,” however, the speaker replies to his wife. Therefore, as well as a sonnet, the poem is a dramatic monologue—in other words, it’s an example of a poem where only one person speaks, but they speak to another person (or multiple people) present. In “Putting in the Seed,” the speaker’s audience is his wife. Other famous examples of dramatic monologues include Robert Browning’s “To My Last Duchess” and Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” Frost’s modernist contemporaries picked up on the form as well. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is sometimes described as a dramatic monologue. Pound, too, wrote dramatic monologues, including “Middle-Age.”
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By Robert Frost
