Shadows in the Yellow Wood: The Dark Side of Robert Frost's PoetryRobert Frost is one of the most widely read and recognized poets of the 20th century century, if not all the time. If its name is mentioned, it is usually followed by a reference to two diverging roads in a yellow wood and taking the less traveled one. But hidden in the shadows of the yellow wood of Frost's poetry are meanings far deeper than are immediately apparent. As modern poet Billy Collins says in his “Introduction to Poetry,” to find the true meaning of a poem we must “…present it to the light/like a colored slide” instead of “…beat it with a pipe. / to find out what it really means” (1-16). When Frost's poems are exposed to the light, it appears that they contain the very themes of existence, themes that turn out to be very dark indeed. Robert Frost uses simple language and images of nature in his poetry to explore the dark realities of life: destruction, humanity's thirst for truth, and the temptation to submit to evil. Throughout his poems, Frost explores the inevitability of destruction. It is a fact of life that everything comes to an end. Nowhere is this more evident than in Frost's poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay," in which he uses the natural images of fading dawn and turning leaves to convey the fleeting beauty of life: Then the leaf disappears into leaf, Then Eden sank into sorrow, Then the dawn descends to day. Nothing gold can stay. (5-8) The entire poem is only eight lines long and the words used are quite simple, but Frost chooses each word carefully. Poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Kay Ryan discusses the speed of this poem and the particular choice of words in her Poetry Magazine article "Laugh While You Can": "We're over it so fast we can't stop ...... middle of paper ......d Poirier and Mark Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1995. 204. Print. Frost, Robert. “In mine.” Poems, prose and plays collected. Comp. Richard Poirier and Mark Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1995. N. pag. Print. Frost, Robert. “Neither far nor deep.” Poems, prose and plays collected. Comp. Richard Poirier and Mark Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1995. 274. Print. Frost, Robert. “Nothing gold can stay.” Poems, prose and plays collected. Comp. Richard Poirier and Mark Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1995. 206. Print. Frost, Robert. “Stopping at Woods on a snowy evening.” Poems, prose and plays collected. Comp. Richard Poirier and Mark Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1995. 207. Print. Ryan, Kay. “Laugh while you can.” Poetry Review May 2006: n. page. Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Internet. May 4 2014.