After Apple-Picking

"The Cool Web" by Robert Graves (1927)

Published 13 years after “After Apple-Picking,” Graves’s poem “The Cool Web” (1927) fuses the fragility of humankind and nature with the brutality of war. Like Frost, Graves—a World War I veteran and poet—incorporated natural imagery into his poems and utilized it as metaphor for the human condition. Similar to Frost, Graves also used broken meter and rhyme in his poetry. Unlike Frost, however, scholars consider Graves a realist poet. Graves and Frost were not only contemporaries: During Frost’s time in England, Frost met, and was influenced by, Graves. Just as the American public continues venerating Frost, scholars around the world—though primarily in the U.K.—continue to acknowledge the contributions Graves made to the World War I literary genre.

"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver (2004)

Published 90 years after “After Apple-Picking,” Oliver’s poem continues the nature poetry tradition. Different from Frost’s work in that Oliver’s poem focuses on a specific animal, “Wild Geese” continues Frost’s tradition utilizing metaphor to transport readers into the natural world. Like Frost’s poems, Oliver’s poems focus on the cycles of loss, grief, and despair and how that cycle parallels the life cycle. Oliver’s poem also focuses on the futility of humankind—a philosophy paralleling the futile tone appearing in “After Apple-Picking” as the speaker recognizes how they could not have ever accomplished all they wanted to accomplish.