Solitude Robert Frost is one of the most famous and influential poets in our nation's history. His simple writing style and constant attention to nature make his poems unique. His poems have fascinated thousands of people and have been analyzed time and again. Many believe that his poems often represent emptiness, loneliness and desperation. The poem "Desert Places" could certainly fall into these categories. Robert Frost was a very successful poet with a loving wife and family which begs the question, “Why would Robert Frost choose to write this poem at this time in his life?” When trying to answer this question you must first analyze the poem. “Desert Places” is a poem told by a third-person observer who initially focuses on a snowy field. In the third line Frost states, “And the ground was almost covered with snow.” This begins to paint a picture of an empty field covered in more and more snow. Towards the end of the poem Frost refers to the stars. The space between the stars is perhaps the greatest empty space we can begin to understand. “Desert locations” are demonstrated through the use of a snowy field and outer space. This is the obvious observation but the poem seems to refer to much more. In line eight of the poem Frost writes, “Loneliness includes me by surprise.” Albert J. Von Fronk makes an interesting observation by saying, "The poet notes that he too is 'distracted'; he too is 'included' in solitude." It is not only the animals and snow-covered fields that the speaker accuses of being alone, but also himself. The field seems to be a metaphor for the speaker's loneliness. Frost proves that what he feels inside is much larger than even the stars. Edward Hirsch explains it best when he writes, “He knows an inner desolation that can equal and even surpass any desolation that exists outside of him.” Hirsch also notes how the last line of the poem reveals the title of the poem. When you read the title of the poem this time, you get a very different sense of the meaning. The worst "desert places" are found within the speaker and, ultimately, Robert Frost. By 1936, astronomers had realized that the hazy spheres they sometimes saw in their telescopes, which looked like stars obscured by gas, were actually galaxies (Hibbison).