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How does Frost use the structure of the poem "Birches" to enhance its meaning?
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Frost uses the structure of "Birches" to enhance its meaning by presenting it as a single stanza, mirroring the unbroken trunk of a birch tree and reinforcing the connection between past and present. The poem uses alliteration and internal rhyme to create rhythm, while enjambment and dashes give it a flowing, natural quality, mimicking the flexible, resilient nature of birch branches.
As others have noted, the poem is unusual for a work of its length in being all one stanza. This may replicate the trunk of a birch tree, but it also reinforces a theme of the poem: everything the narrator has to say is connected because it is about the here and now: the earthly and natural. The birch trees connect past and present, boyhood and adulthood—all rooted in this world.
Second, the poem does not structure itself around end rhymes. It creates a sense of rhythm instead through use of alliteration. Alliteration occurs when words that begin with the same consonant sound are placed in close proximity. Frost uses, for example, the words "cracks," "crazes," "crystal," and "crust" near each other.
Third, Frost employs dashes to create a sense of the poem having sections that are somewhat akin to stanzas without having the sharp breaks and long pauses...
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that stanzas provide.
The internal rhyme also helps structure the poem. In the last line, for instance, we find a slant or imperfect rhyme, but it nevertheless creates a sense of rhythm and emphasis:
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches
Worse and birches (sort of) rhyme, and they create a break in the line after "worse" and give the line a quality of swinging, which mimics the swinging on birches that is being described.
This is an interesting question. Looking at this poem on the page, we can see immediately that Frost has taken the decision not to break it up into stanzas. If we think about the theme — birches, and their long, slender, springy forms — we can immediately draw a connection between Frost's unbroken, lengthy poem and the unbroken branch of the birch trees he describes. The line length, too, wavers throughout, creating a sort of curve; note that the outermost word in the whole poem is "bowed," there at the point where the poem reaches the crest of its own bow.
The choice of enjambment in the poem, too — the places and ways in which one line breaks and runs on to another — seems to support the theme. The way the line breaks between "bend them down to stay/As ice storms do" seems to read like the spring of a birch branch resisting being pushed down forever; the structure and rhythm makes us picture a springy birch branch flicking up in defiance of those elements which would hold it down. Instead of being restrained, it simply moves on to another line.
There are a few ways in which the stucture of Frost's poem nods at its theme. First, there is the most obvious answer. Just hold the poem at arms length and take a look at the line length. You should notice that the poem is tall and skinny -- like a birch. Voila! The next structural thing I would point out is the meter of the poem. "Birches" is written in what is pretty standard Frost iambic blank verse, which means that, although it doesn't rhyme, there is a pretty predictable pattern to the language. The reason that this is important is that we can think of climbing birches, in a metaphorical sense, as aging or leaving youth. Although the exact path that this speaker (or anyone) takes out of their youth is unpredictable (i.e. it doesn't rhyme), the same parameters of the journey are the same (i.e. the 10-syllable lines in iambic pentameter). The meter of the poem echoes one of the themes: the loss of youth, though perhaps unpredicatble to some, is inevitable for all.