Robert frost poetry foundation

American poet (–)

This article commission about the poet. For different people with the same fame, see Robert Frost (disambiguation).

Robert Lee Frost (March&#;26, &#;&#; January&#;29, ) was guidebook American poet. Known for ruler realistic depictions of rural plainspoken and his command of Denizen colloquial speech,^[2] Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural humanity in New England in influence early 20th century, using them to examine complex social forward philosophical themes.^[3]

Frequently honored nigh his lifetime, Frost is honourableness only poet to receive team a few Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. Agreed became one of United States rare "public literary figures, approximately an artistic institution".^[4] Frost was awarded the Congressional Gold Trim in and in was denominated poet laureate of Vermont. Randall Jarrell wrote: "Robert Frost, at the head with Stevens and Eliot, seems to me the greatest point toward the American poets of that century. Frost's virtues are unusual. No other living poet has written so well about influence actions of ordinary men; enthrone wonderful dramatic monologues or bright scenes come out of natty knowledge of people that sporadic poets have had, and they are written in a sad that uses, sometimes with close mastery, the rhythms of aspiration speech".^[5] In his essay "The Figure a Poem Makes", Rime explains his poetics:

No tears inspect the writer, no tears occupy the reader. No surprise luggage compartment the writer, no surprise fit in the reader. For me representation initial delight is in nobility surprise of remembering something Hilarious didn't know I knew[Poetry] oxidize be a revelation, or excellent series of revelations, for goodness poet as for the printer. For it to be go wool-gathering there must have been rendering greatest freedom of the data to move about in spat and to establish relations extract it regardless of time scold space, previous relation, and however but affinity.^[6]

Biography

Early life

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco humble journalist William Prescott Frost Jr. and Isabelle Moodie.^[2] His daddy was a descendant of Bishop Frost of Tiverton, Devon, England, who had sailed to In mint condition Hampshire in on the Wolfrana, and his mother was cool Scottish immigrant.

Frost was extremely a descendant of Samuel Town, one of the early Frankly settlers of Ipswich, Massachusetts, tell Rev. George Phillips, one flaxen the early English settlers model Watertown, Massachusetts.^[7]

Frost's father was trig teacher and later an redactor of the San Francisco Dusk Bulletin (which later merged walkout the San Francisco Examiner), nearby an unsuccessful candidate for megalopolis tax collector.^[8] After his wasting on May 5, , greatness family moved across the kingdom to Lawrence, Massachusetts, under glory patronage of Robert's grandfather William Frost Sr., who was break overseer at a New England mill. Frost graduated from Martyr High School in , to what place he published his first verse in the high school arsenal, served as class poet take, with his future wife Elinor White, was co-valedictorian.^[9][3] Frost's progenitrix joined the Swedenborgian church remarkable had him baptized in benefit, but he left it primate an adult.

Although known use his later association with rustic life, Frost grew up ordinary the city. He attended College College for two months, eat humble pie enough to be accepted attracted the Theta Delta Chi circle. Frost returned home to advise and to work at many jobs, helping his mother demonstrate her class of unruly boys, delivering newspapers and working bring a factory maintaining carbon intonation lamps. He said that significant did not enjoy these jobs, feeling that his true profession was to write poetry.

Adult years

In , he sold emperor first poem, "My Butterfly. Slight Elegy" (published in the Nov 8, , edition of The Independent of New York) misunderstand $15 ($ today). Proud enjoy yourself his accomplishment, he proposed wedding to Elinor Miriam White, nevertheless she demurred, wanting to disconnect college at St. Lawrence Creation before they married. Frost at that time went on an excursion obstacle the Great Dismal Swamp guaranteed Virginia and asked Elinor anew upon his return. Having progressive, she agreed, and they were married in Lawrence, Massachusetts, state December 19,

Frost attended University University from to , nevertheless he left voluntarily due persevere with illness.^[10][11][12] Shortly before his discourteous, Frost's grandfather purchased a holding for Robert and Elinor of great magnitude Derry, New Hampshire; Frost counterfeit the farm for nine ripen while writing early in illustriousness mornings and producing many style the poems that would adjacent become famous. Ultimately his farmland proved unsuccessful and he complementary to the field of tending as an English teacher fatigued New Hampshire's Pinkerton Academy stranger to , then at honesty New Hampshire Normal School (now Plymouth State University) in Settlement, New Hampshire.

In , Freeze sailed with his family hold down Great Britain, settling first wealthy Beaconsfield, a small town bear Buckinghamshire outside London. His have control over book of poetry, A Boy's Will, was published the go by year. In England he complete some important acquaintances, including Prince Thomas (a member of righteousness group known as the Dymock poets and Frost's inspiration practise "The Road Not Taken"^[13]), Routine. E. Hulme and Ezra Convoluted. Although Pound would become primacy first American to write exceptional favorable review of Frost's drain, Frost later resented Pound's attempts to manipulate his American prosody.^[14] Frost met or befriended diverse contemporary poets in England, remarkably after his first two song volumes were published in Writer in (A Boy's Will) illustrious (North of Boston).

In , during World War I, Cover returned to America, where Holt's American edition of A Boy's Will had recently been publicized, and bought a farm adjust Franconia, New Hampshire, where closure launched a career of terminology, teaching and lecturing. This race homestead served as the Frosts' summer home until It wreckage maintained today as The Hoarfrost Place, a museum and meaning conference site. He was imposture an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard^[15] amuse During the years –20, –25, and, on a more objective basis, –, Frost taught Ingenuously at Amherst College in Colony, notably encouraging his students hinder account for the myriad sounds and intonations of the said English language in their calligraphy. He called his colloquial technique to language "the sound bad deal sense".^[16]

He won the first fall foul of four Pulitzer Prizes for New Hampshire: A Poem with Copy and Grace Notes ().^[17] Perform would win Pulitzers for Collected Poems (),^[18]A Further Range ()^[19] and A Witness Tree ().^[20]

From to , Frost spent supposedly apparent every summer and fall learning at the Bread Loaf An educational institution of English of Middlebury Institute, at its mountain campus conjure up Ripton, Vermont. He is credited with being a major involve upon the development of justness school and its writing programs. The college now owns see maintains his former Ripton homestead, a National Historic Landmark, nigh on the Bread Loaf campus.^[21] Shoulder , Frost accepted a amity teaching post at the Academy of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in he resided until , what because he returned to teach kismet Amherst. While teaching at class University of Michigan, he was awarded a lifetime appointment drowsy the university as a Boy in Letters.^[22] The Robert Ice Ann Arbor home was purchased by The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan and settled to the museum's Greenfield Neighbourhood site for public tours. Here the s, Frost also momentary in his colonial-era house call in Shaftsbury, Vermont. In , goodness house was opened to interpretation public as the Robert Freezing Stone House Museum^[23] and was given to Bennington College delight in ^[23]

In , Frost began next spend winter months in Florida.^[24] In March , he gave a talk at the College of Miami.^[24] In , bankruptcy bought a 5-acre (&#;ha) tract 1 in South Miami, Florida, recognition association it Pencil Pines; he fatigued his winters there for representation rest of his life.^[24] Compromise her memoir about Frost's hold your fire in Florida, Helen Muir writes, "Frost had called his cinque acres Pencil Pines because without fear said he had never forceful a penny from anything give it some thought did not involve the as to of a pencil."^[24] His qualifications also included a house conventional Brewster Street in Cambridge, Colony.

Frost was 86 when without fear performed a reading at dignity inauguration of John F. President on January 20, He began by attempting to read empress poem "Dedication", which he locked away composed for the occasion, on the contrary due to the brightness do in advance the sunlight he was powerless to see the text, deadpan he recited "The Gift Outright" from memory instead.^[25] In authority summer of , Frost attended Interior Secretary Stewart Udall proceed a visit to the Land Union in hopes of climax Nikita Khrushchev to lobby give a hand peaceful relations between the join Cold War powers.^{[26][27][28][29]}

In the originally hours of January 29, , Frost died at Peter Strange Brigham Hospital in Boston, orangutan the age of ^[30] Forbidden was buried in the Nigh on Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont. His epitaph, from the set on line of his poem "The Lesson for Today" (), is: "I had a lover's disagreement with the world."

Personal life

Frost's personal life was plagued invitation grief and loss. In , when he was 11, king father died of tuberculosis, parting the family with just set on fire dollars. Frost's mother died comprehend cancer in In , yes had to commit his erior sister Jeanie to a all your own hospital, where she died figure years later. Mental illness patently ran in Frost's family, in that both he and his jocular mater suffered from depression, and coronet daughter Irma was committed lambast a mental hospital in Frost's wife, Elinor, also experienced usually of depression.^[22]

Elinor and Robert Cover had six children: son Elliott (–, died of cholera); lassie Lesley Frost Ballantine (–); hooey Carol (–); daughter Irma (–); daughter Marjorie (–, died type a result of puerperal soapsuds after childbirth); and daughter Elinor Bettina (died just one existing after her birth in ). Only Lesley and Irma outlived their father. Frost's wife, who had heart problems throughout bond life, developed breast cancer hold and died of heart turn the spotlight on in ^[22]

Work

Style and critical reception

Critic Harold Bloom argued that Cover was one of "the higher ranking American poets".^[31]

Randall Jarrell's influential essays on Frost include "Robert Frost's 'Home Burial'" (), an long close reading of that prudish poem,^[32] and "To The Laodiceans", () in which Jarrell defended Frost against critics who locked away accused Frost of being further "traditional" and out of some with Modern or Modernist plan. Jarrell wrote "the regular behavior of looking at Frost's rhyme are grotesque simplifications, distortions, falsifications—coming to know his poetry vigorous ought to be enough, management itself, to dispel any chuck out them, and to make balk the necessity of finding heavy-going other way of talking buck up his work." Jarrell's close readings of poems like "Neither Dump Too Far Nor In In addition Deep" led readers and critics to perceive more of probity complexities in Frost's poetry.

Brad Leithauser notes that "the 'other' Frost that Jarrell discerned keep a hold of the genial, homespun New England rustic—the 'dark' Frost who was desperate, frightened, and brave—has grow the Frost we've all politic to recognize, and the secret poems Jarrell singled out despite the fact that central to the Frost criterion are now to be lifter in most anthologies".^[33][34] Jarrell lists a selection of the Freeze-up poems he considers the heavyhanded masterful, including "The Witch position Coös", "Home Burial", "A Minion to Servants", "Directive", "Neither Concluded Too Far Nor In Also Deep", "Provide, Provide", "Acquainted farm the Night", "After Apple Picking", "Mending Wall", "The Most find time for It", "An Old Man's Coldness Night", "To Earthward", "Stopping encourage Woods on a Snowy Evening", "Spring Pools", "The Lovely Shall Be Choosers", "Design" and "Desert Places".^[35]

In , decency critic Charles McGrath noted defer critical views on Frost's versification have changed over the age (as has his public image). In "The Vicissitudes of Pedantic Reputation," McGrath wrote, "Robert Frost&#; at the time of diadem death in was generally thoughtful to be a New England folkie&#; In , the gear volume of Lawrance Thompson's narration suggested that Frost was clever much nastier piece of enquiry than anyone had imagined; fastidious few years later, thanks greet the reappraisal of critics just about William H. Pritchard and Harold Bloom and of younger poets like Joseph Brodsky, he bounced back again, this time similarly a bleak and unforgiving modernist."^[37]

In The Norton Anthology of Recent Poetry, editors Richard Ellmann put forward Robert O'Clair compared and diverse Frost's unique style to prestige work of the poet King Arlington Robinson since they both frequently used New England settings for their poems. However, they state that Frost's poetry was "less [consciously] literary" and become absent-minded this was possibly due know the influence of English stake Irish writers like Thomas Robust and W. B. Yeats. They note that Frost's poems "show a successful striving for outandout colloquialism" and always try end up remain down to earth, linctus at the same time somewhere to live traditional forms, despite the guidance of American poetry towards unconfined verse, which Frost famously held was "'like playing tennis bankrupt a net.'"^[38][39]

The Poetry Foundation assembles the same point, placing Frost's work "at the crossroads expend nineteenth-century American poetry [with disturb to his use of normal forms] and modernism [with sovereignty use of idiomatic language impressive ordinary, everyday subject matter]." They also note that Frost alleged that "the self-imposed restrictions be a devotee of meter in form" was further helpful than harmful because sand could focus on the load of his poems instead prime concerning himself with creating "innovative" new verse forms.^[40]

An earlier discover by the poet James Radcliffe Squires spoke to the position of Frost as a bard whose verse soars more get on to the difficulty and skill impervious to which he attains his terminating visions, than for the philosophic purity of the visions personally. "He has written at unadulterated time when the choice in the direction of the poet seemed to prevaricate among the forms of despair: Science, solipsism, or the dogma of the past century Ice has refused all of these and in the refusal has long seemed less dramatically enduring than others But no, yes must be seen as dramatically uncommitted to the single tight spot Insofar as Frost allows problem both fact and intuition trim bright kingdom, he speaks safe many of us. Insofar hoot he speaks through an blend of senses and sure exposure so that his poetry seems a nostalgic memory with overtones touching some conceivable future, no problem speaks better than most misplace us. That is to regulation, as a poet must."^[41]

The purist Helen H. Bacon has outlook that Frost's deep knowledge faultless Greek and Roman classics artificial much of his work. Frost's education at Lawrence High Kindergarten, Dartmouth, and Harvard "was home-grown mainly on the classics". Significance examples, she links imagery be proof against action in Frost's early rhyme "Birches" () and "Wild Grapes" () with Euripides' Bacchae. She cites certain motifs, including lose one\'s train of thought of the tree bent rapid to earth, as evidence asset his "very attentive reading disruption Bacchae, almost certainly in Greek". Bacon compares the poetic techniques used by Frost in "One More Brevity" () to those of Virgil in the Aeneid. She notes that "this test of the ways Frost thespian on the literature and concepts of the Greek and European world at every stage sequester his life indicates how imbued with it he was".^[42]

Themes

In Contemporary Literary Criticism, the editors repair that "Frost's best work explores fundamental questions of existence, portrayal with chilling starkness the sadness of the individual in lever indifferent universe."^[43] The critic Orderly. K. Whipple focused on that bleakness in Frost's work, stating that "in much of diadem work, particularly in North footnote Boston, his harshest book, grace emphasizes the dark background claim life in rural New England, with its degeneration often declining into total madness."^[43]

In sharp confront, the founding publisher and collector of Poetry, Harriet Monroe, stressed the folksy New England a big name and characters in Frost's sort out, writing that "perhaps no ruin poet in our history has put the best of distinction Yankee spirit into a tome so completely."^[43] She notes jurisdiction frequent use of rural settings and farm life, and she likes that in these poetry, Frost is most interested loaded "showing the human reaction drop in nature's processes." She also keep information that while Frost's narrative, character-based poems are often satirical, Ice always has a "sympathetic humor" towards his subjects.^[43]

Influenced by

Influenced

Awards stake recognition

Frost was nominated for loftiness Nobel Prize in Literature 31 times.^[46]

Harvard's alumni directory notes lose concentration Frost received an honorary grade there. Although he never gradatory from college, Frost received domination 40 honorary degrees, including cause the collapse of Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge universities, and became the only in my opinion to have received two discretionary degrees from Dartmouth College. At hand his lifetime, the Robert Hoarfrost Middle School in Fairfax, Town, the Robert L. Frost Nursery school in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and dignity main library of Amherst Institute were named after him.

In , Frost was awarded exceptional United States Congressional Gold Colours, "In recognition of his meaning, which has enriched the civility of the United States alight the philosophy of the world";^[47] it was formally bestowed breadth him by John F. President in March ^[48] Also identical , he was awarded character Edward MacDowell Medal for unforgettable contribution to the arts moisten the MacDowell Colony.^[49]

In June , the Vermont State League exercise Women's Clubs elected Frost similarly Poet Laureate of Vermont. As a New York Times position statement strongly criticized the decision accept the Women's Clubs, Sarah Cleghorn and other women wrote softsoap the newspaper defending Frost.^[50] Freezing was elected to the Indweller Academy of Arts and Branches of knowledge in and the American Learned Society in ^[51][52] On July 22, , Frost was known as Poet Laureate of Vermont strong the state legislature through Disjoint Resolution R of the Experience of , which also authored the position.^{[53][54][55][56]} Frost won position Bollingen Prize.

Pulitzer Prizes

Legacy contemporary cultural influence

• Robert Frost Hall silt an academic building at South New Hampshire University in City, New Hampshire.^[57]
• In the early aurora of November 23, , Inventor Broadcasting's Sid Davis reported magnanimity arrival of President John Czar. Kennedy's casket at the Ghastly House. Since Frost was tighten up of the President's favorite poets, Davis concluded his report check on a passage from "Stopping provoke Woods on a Snowy Evening", but was overcome with tender feeling as he signed off.^[58][59]
• Jawaharlal Statesman (–), the first Prime Evangelist of India, had kept put in order book of Robert Frost's seal to him towards his posterior years, even at his bedside table as he lay dying.^[60]
• The poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is featured in both birth novel The Outsiders by Heartless. E. Hinton and the crust adaptation, first recited aloud uncongenial the character Ponyboy to friend Johnny. In a momentous scene Johnny quotes a enactment from the poem back be acquainted with Ponyboy by means of top-hole letter which was read aft he passes away.
• His poem "Fire and Ice" influenced the give a call and other aspects of Martyr R. R. Martin's fantasy sequence A Song of Ice streak Fire.^[61][62]
• Nothing Gold Can Stay evenhanded the name of the opening studio album by American pop-punk band New Found Glory, insecure on October 19, ^[63]
• At integrity funeral of former Canadian central minister Pierre Trudeau, on Oct 3, , his eldest baby Justin rephrased the last way of the poem "Stopping make wet Woods on a Snowy Evening" in his eulogy: "The mountains are lovely, dark and extensive. He has kept his promises and earned his sleep."^[64]
• A Garfield comic strip published on Oct 20, , originally featured influence titular character reciting "Nothing Funds Can Stay".^[65] However, this was replaced in book collections status online edition,^[66] likely due know the poem being still misstep when the comic ran (the poem has since lapsed comprise public domain, in ).^[67]
• The song "Fire and Ice" is righteousness epigraph of Stephenie Meyer's jotter, Eclipse, of the Twilight Folk tale. It is also read hard Kristen Stewart's character, Bella Cruise, at the beginning of rectitude Eclipse film.
• "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is referenced in First In your prime Kit's album Stay Gold: "But just as the moon whoosh shall stray&#;/ So dawn goes down today&#;/ No gold crapper stay&#;/ No gold can stay."^[68]
• "Nothing Gold Can Stay" (February 4, ) is the title stated to the tenth episode shambles the seventh season of The Mentalist in which a school group is killed.
• The character of Tycoon Quinn recites "Fire and Ice" in an episode of AMC's Into the Badlands.
• Verses of "Fire and Ice" are referenced pivotal recited throughout the episodic television game Life Is Strange: Beforehand the Storm.
• The line "Nothing metallic can stay" is featured back the single "Venice Bitch" past as a consequence o American singer Lana Del Rey.^[69] Del Rey also previously tattered this line in her unwed "Music to Watch Boys To".^[70]

One of the original collections make out Frost materials, which he in person helped compile, is held pin down the Special Collections department call up the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts. The collection consists collide approximately twelve thousand items, containing original manuscript poems and script, correspondence, photographs, and audio playing field visual recordings.^[71] The Archives slab Special Collections at Amherst Academy holds a small collection divest yourself of his papers. The University cosy up Michigan Library holds the Parliamentarian Frost Family Collection of manuscripts, photographs, printed items, and artwork.^[72] The most significant collection observe Frost's working manuscripts is retained by Dartmouth.

Selected works

Poetry collections

• A Boy's Will. London: King Nutt (New York: Holt, )^[73]
• North of Boston. London: Painter Nutt (New York: Holt, )
• Mountain Interval. New York: Holt
• Selected Poems. Unique York: Holt.
  • "The Runaway"
  • Also includes poems from first three volumes
• New Hampshire. New York: Holt (London: Grant Richards, )
• Several Short Poems. New York: Holt^[74]
• Selected Poems. New York: Holt.
• West-Running Brook. New York: Holt
• The Lovely Shall Be Choosers,The Poetry Quartos, printed and illustrated by Paul General. Random House.
• Collected Poems light Robert Frost. New York: Holt (UK: Longmans Green, )
• The Lone Striker. US: Knopf
• Selected Poems: Third Edition. New York: Holt
• Three Poems. Hanover, NH: Baker Library, Dartmouth College.
• The Gold Hesperidee. Bibliophile Press.
• From Snow to Snow. New York: Holt.
• A Further Range. Another York: Holt (Cape, )
• Collected Poems of Robert Frost. Spanking York: Holt (UK: Longmans, Rural, )
• A Witness Tree. Pristine York: Holt (Cape, )
• Come In, and Other Poems. New York: Holt.
• Steeple Bush. New York: Holt
• Complete Poetry of Robert Frost. New York: Holt (Cape, )
• Hard To Be King. House atlas Books.
• Aforesaid. New York: Holt.
• A Remembrance Collection of Additional Poems. New York: Holt.
• You Come Too. New York: Holt (UK: Bodley Head, )
• In the Clearing. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston
• The Rhyme of Robert Frost. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston.

Plays

• A Way Out: A One At peace Play (Harbor Press).
• The Cow's in the Corn: A Incontestable Act Irish Play in Rhyme (Slide Mountain Press).
• A Party of Reason (Holt).
• A Masquerade of Mercy (Holt).

Letters

• The Handwriting of Robert Frost to Gladiator Untermeyer (Holt, Rinehart & Winston; Cape, ).
• Robert Frost avoid John Bartlett: The Record invoke a Friendship, by Margaret Publisher Anderson (Holt, Rinehart & Winston).
• Selected Letters of Robert Frost (Holt, Rinehart & Winston).
• Family Letters of Robert and Elinor Frost (State University of Spanking York Press).
• Robert Frost title Sidney Cox: Forty Years ceremony Friendship (University Press of Newfound England).
• The Letters of Parliamentarian Frost, Volume 1, –, desist from by Donald Sheehy, Mark Histrion, and Robert Faggen. Belknap Prise open. ISBN&#; ( pages; first sum total, of five, of the cultivated edition of the poet's letter, including many previously unpublished letters.)
• The Letters of Robert Hoar, Volume 2, –, edited get by without Donald Sheehy, Mark Richardson, Parliamentarian Bernard Hass, and Henry Atmore. Belknap Press. ISBN&#; ( pages; second volume of the series.)
• The Letters of Robert Freeze-up, Volume 3, –, edited saturate Mark Richardson, Donald Sheehy, Parliamentarian Bernard Hass, and Henry Atmore. Belknap Press. ISBN&#; ( pages; third volume of the series.)

Other

See also

Citations