Putting in the Seed

Frost wrote a great many nature poems. He also wrote many dialogues between a husband and a wife. Robert Swennes observes that “Putting in the Seed” is a bit of both, because the speaker is planting apple seeds when his wife comes to tell him it’s time to go inside for dinner:

In “Putting in the Seed” the poet shows the parallel between a farmer’s “springtime passion for the earth” . . . and his love for his wife. . . . [T]hey draw closer together through their mutual love of the fruitful earth. (Swennes, Robert H. “Man and Wife: The Dialogue of Contraries in Robert Frost's Poetry.” American Literature, vol. 42, no. 3, 1970, p. 371)

This is one interpretation, but the poem is a bit more complicated than Swennes lets on, because unlike many of Frost’s marriage dialogues, in “Putting in the Seed,” the wife never speaks. As a result, it is unclear whether she truly shares the speaker’s feelings.

Instead of a marriage dialogue, it is more precise and nuanced to say that “Putting in the Seed” is a marriage monologue. Prior to the poem beginning, it appears the wife asked the speaker to go inside for dinner.