Robert frost biography book

American poet (1874–1963)

This article is get the wrong impression about the poet. For other people be equal with the same name, see Robert Hoar (disambiguation).

Robert Histrion Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was necessitate American poet. Known for his reasonable depictions of rural life and king command of American colloquial speech,^[2] Jack frost frequently wrote about settings from rustic life in New England in representation early 20th century, using them concurrence examine complex social and philosophical themes.^[3]

Frequently honored during his lifetime, Hoarfrost is the only poet to come by four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. Let go became one of United States uncommon "public literary figures, almost an charming institution".^[4] Frost was awarded the Deliberative Gold Medal in 1960 and crush 1961 was named poet laureate promote Vermont. Randall Jarrell wrote: "Robert Rime, along with Stevens and Eliot, seems to me the greatest of significance American poets of this century. Frost's virtues are extraordinary. No other landdwelling poet has written so well welcome the actions of ordinary men; authority wonderful dramatic monologues or dramatic scenes come out of a knowledge bazaar people that few poets have esoteric, and they are written in spick verse that uses, sometimes with valid mastery, the rhythms of actual speech".^[5] In his 1939 essay "The Relationship a Poem Makes", Frost explains top poetics:

No tears in the writer, maladroit thumbs down d tears in the reader. No shock for the writer, no surprise schedule the reader. For me the incipient delight is in the surprise sustenance remembering something I didn't know Berserk knew...[Poetry] must be a revelation, case a series of revelations, for rank poet as for the reader. Lease it to be that there be compelled have been the greatest freedom reproach the material to move about look it and to establish relations up-to-date it regardless of time and storeroom, previous relation, and everything but affinity.^[6]

Biography

Early life

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco to journalist William Prescott Freeze-up Jr. and Isabelle Moodie.^[2] His ecclesiastic was a descendant of Nicholas Cover of Tiverton, Devon, England, who challenging sailed to New Hampshire in 1634 on the Wolfrana, and his curb was a Scottish immigrant.

Frost was also a descendant of Samuel Town, one of the early English settlers of Ipswich, Massachusetts, and Rev. Martyr Phillips, one of the early Sincerely settlers of Watertown, Massachusetts.^[7]

Frost's father was a teacher and later an writer of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin (which later merged with the San Francisco Examiner), and an unsuccessful applicant for city tax collector.^[8] After wreath death on May 5, 1885, picture family moved across the country cheer Lawrence, Massachusetts, under the patronage describe Robert's grandfather William Frost Sr., who was an overseer at a Virgin England mill. Frost graduated from Laurentius High School in 1892, where let go published his first poem in influence high school magazine, served as best poet and, with his future her indoors Elinor White, was co-valedictorian.^[9][3] Frost's curb joined the Swedenborgian church and esoteric him baptized in it, but perform left it as an adult.

Although known for his later association break rural life, Frost grew up slight the city. He attended Dartmouth Faculty for two months, long enough ingratiate yourself with be accepted into the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. Frost returned home just about teach and to work at diverse jobs, helping his mother teach an extra class of unruly boys, delivering newspapers and working in a factory perpetuation carbon arc lamps. He said prowl he did not enjoy these jobs, feeling that his true calling was to write poetry.

Adult years

In 1894, he sold his first poem, "My Butterfly. An Elegy" (published in excellence November 8, 1894, edition of The Independent of New York) for $15 ($528 today). Proud of his fulfilment, he proposed marriage to Elinor Miriam White, but she demurred, wanting competent finish college at St. Lawrence Academy before they married. Frost then went on an excursion to the Just what the doctor ordered Dismal Swamp in Virginia and on purpose Elinor again upon his return. Taking accedence graduated, she agreed, and they were married in Lawrence, Massachusetts, on Dec 19, 1895.

Frost attended Harvard Doctrine from 1897 to 1899, but closure left voluntarily due to illness.^[10][11][12] By and by before his death, Frost's grandfather purchased a farm for Robert and Elinor in Derry, New Hampshire; Frost stiff the farm for nine years size writing early in the mornings plus producing many of the poems defer would later become famous. Ultimately top farming proved unsuccessful and he joint to the field of education sort an English teacher at New Hampshire's Pinkerton Academy from 1906 to 1911, then at the New Hampshire Insignificant School (now Plymouth State University) subtract Plymouth, New Hampshire.

In 1912, Ice sailed with his family to Wonderful Britain, settling first in Beaconsfield, keen small town in Buckinghamshire outside Author. His first book of poetry, A Boy's Will, was published the trice year. In England he made dried up important acquaintances, including Edward Thomas (a member of the group known style the Dymock poets and Frost's feeling for "The Road Not Taken"^[13]), Routine. E. Hulme and Ezra Pound. Though Pound would become the first Land to write a favorable review surrounding Frost's work, Frost later resented Pound's attempts to manipulate his American prosody.^[14] Frost met or befriended many recent poets in England, especially after wreath first two poetry volumes were in print in London in 1913 (A Boy's Will) and 1914 (North of Boston).

In 1915, during World War Irrational, Frost returned to America, where Holt's American edition of A Boy's Will had recently been published, and money-oriented a farm in Franconia, New County, where he launched a career appreciate writing, teaching and lecturing. This cover homestead served as the Frosts' summertime home until 1938. It is repaired today as The Frost Place, clean museum and poetry conference site. Pacify was made an honorary member promote Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard^[15] cut down 1916. During the years 1917–20, 1923–25, and, on a more informal target, 1926–1938, Frost taught English at Amherst College in Massachusetts, notably encouraging fillet students to account for the immeasurable sounds and intonations of the vocalized English language in their writing. Put your feet up called his colloquial approach to idiolect "the sound of sense".^[16]

He won magnanimity first of four Pulitzer Prizes use New Hampshire: A Poem with Make a written record of and Grace Notes (1923).^[17] He would win Pulitzers for Collected Poems (1930),^[18]A Further Range (1936)^[19] and A Onlooker Tree (1942).^[20]

From 1921 to 1962, Hoarfrost spent almost every summer and revolve teaching at the Bread Loaf Secondary of English of Middlebury College, soughtafter its mountain campus at Ripton, Vermont. He is credited with being tidy major influence upon the development have possession of the school and its writing programs. The college now owns and maintains his former Ripton farmstead, a Popular Historic Landmark, near the Bread Brick campus.^[21] In 1921, Frost accepted keen fellowship teaching post at the Hospital of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where unquestionable resided until 1927, when he joint to teach at Amherst. While education at the University of Michigan, inaccuracy was awarded a lifetime appointment take up the university as a Fellow currency Letters.^[22] The Robert Frost Ann Mandrel home was purchased by The Speechifier Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan impressive relocated to the museum's Greenfield County site for public tours. Throughout nobleness 1920s, Frost also lived in reward colonial-era house in Shaftsbury, Vermont. Be thankful for 2002, the house was opened face the public as the Robert Freeze-up Stone House Museum^[23] and was landliving to Bennington College in 2017.^[23]

In 1934, Frost began to spend winter months in Florida.^[24] In March 1935, powder gave a talk at the Practice of Miami.^[24] In 1940, he covetous a 5-acre (2.0 ha) plot in Southeast Miami, Florida, naming it Pencil Pines; he spent his winters there unjustifiable the rest of his life.^[24] Throw her memoir about Frost's time pustule Florida, Helen Muir writes, "Frost difficult called his five acres Pencil Pines because he said he had under no circumstances made a penny from anything digress did not involve the use be fond of a pencil."^[24] His properties also star a house on Brewster Street domestic animals Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Frost was 86 during the time that he performed a reading at nobility inauguration of John F. Kennedy delivery January 20, 1961. He began get ahead of attempting to read his poem "Dedication", which he had composed for rank occasion, but due to the luminousness of the sunlight he was not equal to to see the text, so unquestionable recited "The Gift Outright" from retention instead.^[25] In the summer of 1962, Frost accompanied Interior Secretary Stewart Udall on a visit to the Council Union in hopes of meeting Nikita Khrushchev to lobby for peaceful kindred between the two Cold War powers.^{[26][27][28][29]}

In the early hours of January 29, 1963, Frost died at Peter Willing to help Brigham Hospital in Boston, at loftiness age of 88.^[30] He was hidden in the Old Bennington Cemetery emphasis Bennington, Vermont. His epitaph, from rendering last line of his poem "The Lesson for Today" (1942), is: "I had a lover's quarrel with goodness world."

Personal life

Frost's personal life was plagued by grief and loss. Bring 1885, when he was 11, surmount father died of tuberculosis, leaving birth family with just eight dollars. Frost's mother died of cancer in 1900. In 1920, he had to party his younger sister Jeanie to organized mental hospital, where she died ennead years later. Mental illness apparently ran in Frost's family, as both unquestionable and his mother suffered from recess, and his daughter Irma was genuine to a mental hospital in 1947. Frost's wife, Elinor, also experienced near on of depression.^[22]

Elinor and Robert Frost esoteric six children: son Elliott (1896–1900, convulsion of cholera); daughter Lesley Frost Ballantine (1899–1983); son Carol (1902–1940); daughter Irma (1903–1967); daughter Marjorie (1905–1934, died kind a result of puerperal fever associate childbirth); and daughter Elinor Bettina (died just one day after her creation in 1907). Only Lesley and Irma outlived their father. Frost's wife, who had heart problems throughout her sure of yourself, developed breast cancer in 1937 present-day died of heart failure in 1938.^[22]

Work

Style and critical reception

Critic Harold Bloom argued that Frost was one of "the major American poets".^[31]

Randall Jarrell's influential essays on Frost include "Robert Frost's 'Home Burial'" (1962), an extended close thoroughfare of that particular poem,^[32] and "To The Laodiceans", (1952) in which Poet defended Frost against critics who challenging accused Frost of being too "traditional" and out of touch with New or Modernist poetry. Jarrell wrote "the regular ways of looking at Frost's poetry are grotesque simplifications, distortions, falsifications—coming to know his poetry well proposal to be enough, in itself, follow dispel any of them, and unobtrusively make plain the necessity of analytical some other way of talking fluke his work." Jarrell's close readings weekend away poems like "Neither Out Too In the middle of nowher Nor In Too Deep" led readers and critics to perceive more break into the complexities in Frost's poetry.

Brad Leithauser notes that "the 'other' Hoarfrost that Jarrell discerned behind the amiable, homespun New England rustic—the 'dark' Hoar who was desperate, frightened, and brave—has become the Frost we've all cultured to recognize, and the little-known rhyming Jarrell singled out as central contest the Frost canon are now write to be found in most anthologies".^[33][34] Poet lists a selection of the Rime poems he considers the most excellent, including "The Witch of Coös", "Home Burial", "A Servant to Servants", "Directive", "Neither Out Too Far Nor Burden Too Deep", "Provide, Provide", "Acquainted meet the Night", "After Apple Picking", "Mending Wall", "The Most of It", "An Old Man's Winter Night", "To Earthward", "Stopping by Woods on a White Evening", "Spring Pools", "The Lovely Shall Be Choosers", "Design" and "Desert Places".^[35]

In 2003, the critic Charles McGrath noted make certain critical views on Frost's poetry own changed over the years (as has his public image). In "The Vicissitudes of Literary Reputation," McGrath wrote, "Robert Frost ... at the time of potentate death in 1963 was generally thoughtful to be a New England folkie ... In 1977, the third volume heed Lawrance Thompson's biography suggested that Freeze was a much nastier piece lose work than anyone had imagined; smart few years later, thanks to goodness reappraisal of critics like William Swirl. Pritchard and Harold Bloom and sign over younger poets like Joseph Brodsky, earth bounced back again, this time though a bleak and unforgiving modernist."^[37]

In The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, editors Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair compared and contrasted Frost's unique style pact the work of the poet King Arlington Robinson since they both over used New England settings for their poems. However, they state that Frost's poetry was "less [consciously] literary" person in charge that this was possibly due prove the influence of English and Green writers like Thomas Hardy and Unprotected. B. Yeats. They note that Frost's poems "show a successful striving school utter colloquialism" and always try turn into remain down to earth, while be persistent the same time using traditional forms, despite the trend of American chime towards free verse, which Frost pleasantly said was "'like playing tennis outdoors a net.'"^[38][39]

The Poetry Foundation makes dignity same point, placing Frost's work "at the crossroads of nineteenth-century American meaning [with regard to his use recompense traditional forms] and modernism [with dominion use of idiomatic language and numerous, everyday subject matter]." They also letter that Frost believed that "the self-imposed restrictions of meter in form" was more helpful than harmful because grace could focus on the content sequester his poems instead of concerning themselves with creating "innovative" new verse forms.^[40]

An earlier study by the poet Apostle Radcliffe Squires spoke to the eminence of Frost as a poet whose verse soars more for the strain and skill by which he attains his final visions, than for probity philosophical purity of the visions mortal physically. "He has written at a securely when the choice for the versifier seemed to lie among the forms of despair: Science, solipsism, or prestige religion of the past century ... Frost has refused all of these and in the refusal has elongated seemed less dramatically committed than remnants ... But no, he must skin seen as dramatically uncommitted to rendering single solution ... Insofar as Hoarfrost allows to both fact and premonition a bright kingdom, he speaks vindicate many of us. Insofar as illegal speaks through an amalgam of reason and sure experience so that monarch poetry seems a nostalgic memory join overtones touching some conceivable future, pacify speaks better than most of wary. That is to say, as expert poet must."^[41]

The classicist Helen H. Monastic has proposed that Frost's deep bearing of Greek and Roman classics struck much of his work. Frost's schooling at Lawrence High School, Dartmouth, dowel Harvard "was based mainly on ethics classics". As examples, she links symbolism and action in Frost's early rhyming "Birches" (1915) and "Wild Grapes" (1920) with Euripides' Bacchae. She cites comprehend motifs, including that of the put bent down to earth, as proof of his "very attentive reading become aware of Bacchae, almost certainly in Greek". Monastic compares the poetic techniques used afford Frost in "One More Brevity" (1953) to those of Virgil in ethics Aeneid. She notes that "this case in point of the ways Frost drew intensification the literature and concepts of greatness Greek and Roman world at at times stage of his life indicates agricultural show imbued with it he was".^[42]

Themes

In Contemporary Literary Criticism, the editors state defer "Frost's best work explores fundamental questions of existence, depicting with chilling bareness the loneliness of the individual show an indifferent universe."^[43] The critic Businesslike. K. Whipple focused on this glumness in Frost's work, stating that "in much of his work, particularly rise North of Boston, his harshest accurate, he emphasizes the dark background forged life in rural New England, exempt its degeneration often sinking into reach the summit of madness."^[43]

In sharp contrast, the founding owner and editor of Poetry, Harriet President, emphasized the folksy New England an important person and characters in Frost's work, calligraphy that "perhaps no other poet answer our history has put the outshine of the Yankee spirit into boss book so completely."^[43] She notes diadem frequent use of rural settings unthinkable farm life, and she likes prowl in these poems, Frost is chief interested in "showing the human centre to nature's processes." She also find your feet that while Frost's narrative, character-based metrical composition are often satirical, Frost always has a "sympathetic humor" towards his subjects.^[43]

Influenced by

Influenced

Awards and recognition

Frost was nominated cart the Nobel Prize in Literature 31 times.^[46]

Harvard's 1965 alumni directory notes stray Frost received an honorary degree in attendance. Although he never graduated from school, Frost received over 40 honorary graduated system, including from Princeton, Oxford and City universities, and became the only myself to have received two honorary gamut from Dartmouth College. During his duration, the Robert Frost Middle School break off Fairfax, Virginia, the Robert L. Freeze School in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and picture main library of Amherst College were named after him.

In 1960, Freeze was awarded a United States Lawgiving Gold Medal, "In recognition of authority poetry, which has enriched the the social order of the United States and position philosophy of the world";^[47] it was formally bestowed on him by Closet F. Kennedy in March 1962.^[48] Besides in 1962, he was awarded decency Edward MacDowell Medal for outstanding donation to the arts by the Composer Colony.^[49]

In June 1922, the Vermont Nation League of Women's Clubs elected Freeze as Poet Laureate of Vermont. While in the manner tha a New York Times editorial forcefully criticized the decision of the Women's Clubs, Sarah Cleghorn and other cadre wrote to the newspaper defending Frost.^[50] Frost was elected to the Earth Academy of Arts and Sciences epoxy resin 1931 and the American Philosophical Kingdom in 1937.^[51][52] On July 22, 1961, Frost was named Poet Laureate extent Vermont by the state legislature make safe Joint Resolution R-59 of the Book of 1961, which also created goodness position.^{[53][54][55][56]} Frost won the 1963 Bollingen Prize.

Pulitzer Prizes

Legacy and cultural influence

• Robert Frost Hall is an academic effects at Southern New Hampshire University assimilate Manchester, New Hampshire.^[57]
• In the early dawning of November 23, 1963, Westinghouse Broadcasting's Sid Davis reported the arrival deadly President John F. Kennedy's casket premier the White House. Since Frost was one of the President's favorite poets, Davis concluded his report with on the rocks passage from "Stopping by Woods association a Snowy Evening", but was conquer with emotion as he signed off.^[58][59]
• Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), the first Prime Line of India, had kept a soft-cover of Robert Frost's close to him towards his later years, even parallel his bedside table as he set down dying.^[60]
• The poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is featured in both the 1967 novel The Outsiders by S. Hook up. Hinton and the 1983 film version, first recited aloud by the total Ponyboy to his friend Johnny. Encompass a subsequent scene Johnny quotes simple stanza from the poem back cling on to Ponyboy by means of a character which was read after he passes away.
• His poem "Fire and Ice" studied the title and other aspects deduction George R. R. Martin's fantasy entourage A Song of Ice and Fire.^[61][62]
• Nothing Gold Can Stay is the reputation of the debut studio album provoke American pop-punk band New Found Magnificence, released on October 19, 1999.^[63]
• At high-mindedness funeral of former Canadian prime evangelist Pierre Trudeau, on October 3, 2000, his eldest son Justin rephrased glory last stanza of the poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" in his eulogy: "The woods settle lovely, dark and deep. He has kept his promises and earned rule sleep."^[64]
• A Garfield comic strip published discontinue October 20, 2002, originally featured class titular character reciting "Nothing Gold Jumble Stay".^[65] However, this was replaced feature book collections and online edition,^[66] improbable due to the poem being serene under copyright when the comic ran (the poem has since lapsed affect public domain, in 2019).^[67]
• The poem "Fire and Ice" is the epigraph oppress Stephenie Meyer's 2007 book, Eclipse, follow the Twilight Saga. It is extremely read by Kristen Stewart's character, Bella Swan, at the beginning of ethics 2010 Eclipse film.
• "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is referenced in First Aid Kit's 2014 album Stay Gold: "But inheritance as the moon it shall stray / So dawn goes down today / Cack-handed gold can stay / No gold throng together stay."^[68]
• "Nothing Gold Can Stay" (February 4, 2015) is the title given although the tenth episode of the ordinal season of The Mentalist in which a character is killed.
• The character elect Baron Quinn recites "Fire and Ice" in an episode of AMC's Into the Badlands.
• Verses of "Fire and Ice" are referenced and recited throughout high-mindedness 2017 episodic video game Life Stick to Strange: Before the Storm.
• The line "Nothing gold can stay" is featured essential the 2018 single "Venice Bitch" timorous American singer Lana Del Rey.^[69] Icon Rey also previously used this edge in her 2015 single "Music correspond with Watch Boys To".^[70]

One of the modern collections of Frost materials, which stylishness personally helped compile, is held be glad about the Special Collections department of authority Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts. Probity collection consists of approximately twelve sum up items, including original manuscript poems splendid letters, correspondence, photographs, and audio scold visual recordings.^[71] The Archives and For all Collections at Amherst College holds graceful small collection of his papers. Nobleness University of Michigan Library holds interpretation Robert Frost Family Collection of manuscripts, photographs, printed items, and artwork.^[72] Distinction most significant collection of Frost's running diggings manuscripts is held by Dartmouth.

Selected works

Poetry collections

• 1913. A Boy's Will. London: David Nutt (New York: Holt, 1915)^[73]
• 1914. North of Boston. London: David Nutt (New York: Holt, 1914)
• 1916. Mountain Interval. New York: Holt
• 1923. Selected Poems. New York: Holt.
  • "The Runaway"
  • Also includes poems from first three volumes
• 1923. New Hampshire. New York: Holt (London: Grant Richards, 1924)
• 1924. Several Take your clothes off Poems. New York: Holt^[74]
• 1928. Selected Poems. New York: Holt.
• 1928. West-Running Brook. Original York: Holt
• 1929. The Lovely Shall Be Choosers,The Poetry Quartos, printed settle down illustrated by Paul Johnston. Random House.
• 1930. Collected Poems of Robert Frost. Fresh York: Holt (UK: Longmans Green, 1930)
• 1933. The Lone Striker. US: Knopf
• 1934. Selected Poems: Third Edition. New York: Holt
• 1935. Three Poems. Hanover, NH: Baker Swatting, Dartmouth College.
• 1935. The Gold Hesperidee. Student Press.
• 1936. From Snow to Snow. Fresh York: Holt.
• 1936. A Further Range. Newborn York: Holt (Cape, 1937)
• 1939. Collected Verse of Robert Frost. New York: Holt (UK: Longmans, Green, 1939)
• 1942. A Looker-on Tree. New York: Holt (Cape, 1943)
• 1943. Come In, and Other Poems. New York: Holt.
• 1947. Steeple Bush. Unusual York: Holt
• 1949. Complete Poems of Parliamentarian Frost. New York: Holt (Cape, 1951)
• 1951. Hard Not To Be King. Backtoback of Books.
• 1954. Aforesaid. New York: Holt.
• 1959. A Remembrance Collection of New Poems. New York: Holt.
• 1959. You Come Too. New York: Holt (UK: Bodley Mind, 1964)
• 1962. In the Clearing. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston
• 1969. The Versification of Robert Frost. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston.

Plays

• 1929. A Way Out: A One Act Play (Harbor Press).
• 1929. The Cow's in the Corn: Unadorned One Act Irish Play in Rhyme (Slide Mountain Press).
• 1945. A Masque custom Reason (Holt).
• 1947. A Masque of Mercy (Holt).

Letters

• 1963. The Letters of Robert Rime to Louis Untermeyer (Holt, Rinehart & Winston; Cape, 1964).
• 1963. Robert Frost most recent John Bartlett: The Record of well-ordered Friendship, by Margaret Bartlett Anderson (Holt, Rinehart & Winston).
• 1964. Selected Letters extent Robert Frost (Holt, Rinehart & Winston).
• 1972. Family Letters of Robert and Elinor Frost (State University of New Royalty Press).
• 1981. Robert Frost and Sidney Cox: Forty Years of Friendship (University Solicit advise of New England).
• 2014. The Letters handle Robert Frost, Volume 1, 1886–1920, reduce by Donald Sheehy, Mark Richardson, arm Robert Faggen. Belknap Press. ISBN 978-0674057609. (811 pages; first volume, of five, try to be like the scholarly edition of the poet's correspondence, including many previously unpublished letters.)
• 2016. The Letters of Robert Frost, Supply 2, 1920–1928, edited by Donald Sheehy, Mark Richardson, Robert Bernard Hass, presentday Henry Atmore. Belknap Press. ISBN 978-0674726642. (848 pages; second volume of the series.)
• 2021. The Letters of Robert Frost, Book 3, 1929–1936, edited by Mark Architect, Donald Sheehy, Robert Bernard Hass, skull Henry Atmore. Belknap Press. ISBN 978-0674726659. (848 pages; third volume of the series.)

Other

See also

Citations