Coming Home in 1945: Reading Robert Frost and NormanRockwell.

Many American artists, writers, and filmmakers portrayed enlisted men returning at the end of World War II. It is surprising, however, to see how this gloom and trauma permeate the work of two unlikely figures: Robert Frost and Norman Rockwell. Frost, the poet of Vermont themes, did his best to avoid writing about the war, but his great poem "Directive," about a somber return home, is powerfully linked to 1945, the time in which it was written. Frost and Rockwell, both Vermont residents, did not know one another, and their aesthetic aims were not the same: Rockwell painted propaganda and Frost did his best to steer clear of propagandistic themes. Frost wrote "Directive" when he was seventy-one, and he published it in book form in Steeple Bush, his eighth volume of poetry. INSET: "Directive" by Robert Frost.