Part of the reason that Frost's poem "Home Burial" is so painful is because the poet seems to uglify the line music deliberately. This is notable in a writer with an ear as finely tuned as Frost's--and for me, it adds yet another pressure of anxiety to a narrative that is already difficult to read. The poem is essentially a conversation between two characters, a husband and a wife, who are unable to speak to each other about the death of their child. In other words, it's a poem formed by surface speech that demonstrates the characters' lack of deep, connective speech.

Here's an example. The speaker in the first stanza is the husband; in the second, the wife.

"My words are nearly always an offense.

I don't know how to speak of anything

So as to please you. But I might be taught,

I should suppose. I can't say I see how.

A man must partly give up being a man

With womenfolk. We could have some arrangement

By which I'd bind myself to keep hands off

Anything special you're a-mind to name.

Though I don't like such things 'twixt those that love.

Two that don't love can't live together without them.

But two that do can't live together with them."

She moved the latch a little. "Don't--don't go.

Don't carry it to someone else this time.

Tell me about it if it's something human.

Let me into your grief. I'm not so much

Unlike other folks as your standing there

Apart would make me out. Give me my chance.

I do think, though, you overdo it a little.

What was it brought you up to think it the thing

To take your mother-loss of a first child

So inconsolably--in the face of love.

You'd think his memory might be satisfied--"

"There you go sneering now!"

So much talk. So much silence. It's such a troubling poem, and it must have been hell to write.