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 | | | Photograph: Robert Frost with son Carol, circa 1916-17. |
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Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)
Category: American Literature Born: March 26, 1874
San Francisco, California, United States Died: January 29, 1963
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Related authors:
Carl Sandburg, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens
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| 1/20/1961 |
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Presidential Panegyrics
On this day in 1961 Robert Frost recited "The Gift Outright" at John F. Kennedy's inauguration, initiating the short, Democrats-only tradition of Presidential panegyrics in America. Although Frost's presentation stumbled, it eventually triumphed, and when thanking Kennedy afterwards Frost hoped that it might be the beginning of something: "Poetry and power is the formula for another Augustan Age." |
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| 8/1/1915 |
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Robert Frost's "Road Not Taken"
On this day in 1915 Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" was first published in the Atlantic Monthly. This was just as Frost had returned to America from England, to farm and become famous: "There is room for only one person at the top of the steeple," he would say, "and I always meant that person to be me." Later misfortunes would make him feel punished and sorry for his choice. |
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| 11/6/1894 |
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Robert Frost's Dismal Swamp
On this day in 1894 twenty-year-old Robert Frost departed for the Dismal Swamp on the Virginia-North Carolina border. He was poor, jobless, unpublished, expelled from Dartmouth College, and recently spurned by his high school sweetheart. Adding it all up, Frost packed a small bag, took a train to New York, a steamer to Virginia, and began walking into a soggy heart of darkness. |
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| 11/15/1923 |
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Robert Frost, Farmer-Poet
Robert Frost returned to America in 1915 with two hopes. One was that, given ambition of "astonishing magnitude," he might build at home upon the reputation he had earned abroad for his first two books of poetry. The other hope was to find "a farm in New England where I could live cheap and get Yankier and Yankier." Both hopes were realized, though Frost would later regret that the farmer lost out to the poet. |
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Academy of American Poets
Frost biography, poetry, bibliography, and links. Selected poems include "Birches," "Design," "Home Burial," "Mending Wall," and "To Earthward."
"Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony." |  | Modern American Poetry - Robert Frost
Features a biography, literary criticism and analysis of "Mending Wall," "After Apple-Picking," "The Wood Pile," "The Road Not Taken," "Birches," "Acquainted with the Night," and other poems. Also offers an image gallery, bibliography, and links.
"Frost won the first of four Pulitzer Prizes in 1924 for his fourth book, New Hampshire, and followed it with West-Running Brook (1928) and A Further Range (1936), which also won a Pulitzer. Yet the latter volume occasioned, from critics on the left, the first really harsh criticism Frost's poetry had received. One of those critics, Rolfe Humphries, complained in New Masses (his review was titled 'A Further Shrinking') that Frost no longer showed either a dramatic or a sympathetic attitude toward his New England characters; that in setting himself against systematic political and social reforms (especially, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal), he had become querulous and sarcastic, all too personally present in his quarrel with the way things were going." | | The Literary Traveler - The Nature of New England
Stories about visits to locales in Frost's life, including the his farm in Derry, New Hampshire, the Dismal Swamp near Suffolk, Virginia, the Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire, The Robert Frost Memorial Trail in Vermont, and Old Bennington Cemetery. On the Derry farm:
"Most importantly for Frost it was here he overcame problems he had faced in his earlier years such as depression and unfulfilled attempts at suicide. It was at Derry that Frost began to write seriously. His intention all along had been to sell the farm after the ten years were up. When selling time came it was tinged with regret. The farm held both good and bad associations for him and he would return there for inspiration both in a literal and figurative sense. Frost did return to the farm when he was older and tried to explain who he was but was unrecognized and turned away by the current owner." | | The Robert Frost Web Site
Online collection of Frost's poems, interviews, and audio recordings of Frost reading "The Road Not Taken," "Birches," "The Tuft of Flowers," "The Death of the Hired Man," Mending Wall," "One Step Backward Taken," and many other selections.
"Frost's importance as a poet derives from the power and memorability of particular poems. 'The Death of the Hired Man' (from North of Boston) combines lyric and dramatic poetry in blank verse. 'After Apple-Picking' (from the same volume) is a free-verse dream poem with philosophical undertones. 'Mending Wall' (also published in North of Boston) demonstrates Frost's simultaneous command of lyrical verse, dramatic conversation, and ironic commentary. 'The Road Not Taken' and 'Birches' (from Mountain Interval) and the oft-studied 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' (from New Hampshire) exemplify Frost's ability to join the pastoral and philosophical modes in lyrics of unforgettable beauty." | |
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The TinL masthead features photography by
Natasha D'Schommer
, and the book art featured is by Jim Rosenau.
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