Abstract
Frost presents to us here a rather enigmatic poem. Upon a first contemplation the reader may experience the feeling that he has read a poem about nothing, and may read and re-read it, endeavoring to discover some hidden meaning. And indeed “The Wood-Pile” is virtually about nothing, a blatant illustration of Frost's delight at saying the ordinary thing and discovering that it is art. From the opening hesitation to the apparition of a ‘small bird' guiding the speaker towards ‘a pile of wood', which provokes in the speaker's mind contemplations about the ‘someone' responsible for abandoning the woodpile, very little action takes place and the poem can be considered more as a meditation than a dramatic narrative, simply offering the soliloquy of a lone figure walking in a winter landscape. Frost purposefully seeks the reader's awareness of this peculiar progression in his narrative. Let us then analyze in the same order as Frost suggests.
