Robert Frost's poem "After-Apple-Picking" describes a man who is tired after picking apples all day. Though his work is not fully completed, with apples left on the trees and barrels unfinished, he is ready for sleep. The effects of exhaustion are evident, as he struggles to rub the strange visions from his eyes. Through brilliantly constructed language, Frost captures the swaying nature of a drunk man's frame in a style similar to the Drunken Fist form of kung fu - appearing intoxicated but with true craftsmanship. The poem's meter, rhyme, and techniques are worthy of deep analysis and will provide an unforgettable reading experience.

1. A Brief Analysis/Appreciation of
Robert Frost’s After-Apple-Picking
M. NIKITABAR
My long/two-pointed/ladder's/sticking
through a/tree
Toward/heaven/still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking
trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to
touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with
stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like
his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
The gentle, incompetent charlatan speaking in incredibly well-constructed lines of
colloquial language is drunk after not having done his day’s objective of picking all the newly
ripe apples from his orchard. The ladder’s where he left it, leaning against the tree pointing up.
There’s a barrel there that he hasn’t filled, and beside it are a handful of apples that must have
naturally fallen. He’s done with what he hasn’t done yet, though. He’s resting. Don’t bother him.
How like a drunkard to say they’re drinking because they’re tired of something, while they
haven’t in fact done that thing.
Now let me cut this paragraph out so it might stand out to the reader: here’s where Frost
commands my, your, and everyone else’s admiration: a vision so awesome that it commands
remark. “I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight / I got from looking through a pane of
glass / And held against the world of hoary grass.” Our guy has drunk a bottle up until he was
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2. looking through the end of the damn bottle, and now he’s gotten so intoxicated that no amount
of rubbing his eyes, as drunks do, will take the strangeness out of them. Frost knew how to
party. Hard.
Reading the poem out loud is an experience the reader will likely never forget. Trochee
after trochee with a brilliant—I don’t know what else to call it but—footwork where the meter is
lengthened and shortened, as if to show the swaying of a drunk man’s form and framework,
while staying above the highest lyrical standards. The rhyme scheme is worth its own essay.
Frost’s overall technique here is starkly similar to a style of kung fu called the Zui Quan or the
Drunken Fist, where the kung fu artist “deliberately imitates the actions of an over indulger”,
but to actual utility. Frost truly was, as he said, “one of the most notable craftsmen of [his]
time”.
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