“After Apple-Picking”

• Originally Published: 1914
• Form/Meter: 42 lines; loose iambic pentameter
• Literary Devices: Metaphor, tone, assonance, consonance
• Setting: An apple orchard
• Central Concern: On a sleepless night, the speaker reflects on a day of apple picking. Just before succumbing to sleep, the speaker wonders if they will have a regular night’s sleep or a “long sleep.”
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Reflections on death

Robert Frost, Poet

• Bio: 1874-1963; born in San Francisco; sold his first poem, “My Butterfly. An Elegy,” in 1894; attended Harvard University for two years but left due to illness; farmed for nine years before giving it up; taught at various universities over the course of his life; often considered “too traditional” for the Modernist poets of his time; became one of the “major American poets,” according to Harold Bloom; known for realistic depictions of rural life and command of American colloquial speech; only poet to ever receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry; awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960; named poet laureate of Vermont in 1961; nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 31 times
• Other Works: A Boy’s Will (1913); North of Boston (1914); Mountain Interval (1916); New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes (1924); Collected Poems (1931); A Further Range (1937); A Witness Tree (1943)