Robert Frost--America's Poet

Image: by grongar (Robert Frost House - Sign [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Surprisingly, New England poet Robert Frost was born in San Francisco and lived there until age eleven. Left destitute by his father's death, the family moved East, aided by the paternal grandfather. Growing up in Lawrence, Mass., Robert became passionately interested in poetry in high school. He attended Dartmouth and later, Harvard. Although he received honorary degrees from both universities, and from many others including Oxford and Cambridge, he left college to support his family, never graduating. .

Frost's personal life seemed full of loss and sadness. His father, by some sources, was a gambler and a drinker. The elder Frost was a journalist and editor of a prominent San Francisco newspaper, but his death left the family with virtually no assets. Frost's later childhood in New England seems to have been happier, but his mother died when he was only twenty-six. He married Elinor Miriam White in 1895. The marriage, though happy, also had its share of tragedy. Their first son died of cholera at age eight, a daughter died a few days after birth. Depression seemed to run in the family. A son committed suicide as an adult, two daughters spent time in mental institutions. Of six children, only two outlived their father.

Frost's professional life was happier. He sold his first poem "My Butterfly" in 1894. After his marriage, Frost and his family lived in New Hampshire where he farmed and wrote, producing some of his best- known poems. In 1912 the family moved to England, where Frost met and worked with famous poets of the time, particularly Ezra Pound and others, such as Rupert Brooke, and Siegfried Sassoon who would become renowned poets of WWI . Frost continued to write and publish successfully in England. When WWI broke out, they came back to the U.S. Frost was already very popular. By the 1920s, he would be the most famous poet in America.

The recipient of four Pulitzer prizes, Frost continued to receive awards and accolades throughout his life. Asked by President-elect John F. Kennedy to speak at his 1961 inauguration, Frost had planned to read a poem he'd written for the occasion. However, sunlight and glare proved too much for his failing eyesight, so instead, he recited another of his poems, "The Gift Outright", from memory. In 1962, he received a Congressional Gold Medal.

Robert Frost died on January 29, 1963, at the age of eighty-eight, following a pulmonary embolism.

My Ten Favorites:

• Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening


• Nothing Gold Can Stay


• The Road Not Taken


• Mending Wall


• Birches


• Fire And Ice


• The Gift Outright


• The Cow In Apple-Time


• The Last Mowing


• The Birthplace

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Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

These familiar words are the opening stanza of this beautiful and greatly loved poem. Still my favorite after all these years. I say it's the story of a man who, inspired by the beauty of the falling snow and the woods, stops to enjoy the view, then knowing he still has places to go, and things to do, realizes it's time to go on. Others see something sinister or ominous in these lovely words and images.Frost himself said that he was annoyed by those "pressing it for more than it should be pressed for. It means enough without its being pressed".

I refuse to see anything but innocent beauty.
The last verse:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Click here to read "Stopping by Woods" in its entirety

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Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood

The first lines of another beloved Frost poem. For this one, there is some justification for a different interpretation. Frost himself said of "The Road Not Taken": "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem - very tricky."

The conundrum lies in whether the poem is to be interpreted as the traveler having taken the road less traveled, is happy because things turned out well. Alternatively, the last stanza is interpreted to mean that the traveler has not yet yet discovered the consequences of the road chosen, and anything could happen....read it carefully....,

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

To Read "The Road Not Taken" Click Here

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun

So begins one of my best-loved Robert Frost poems. "Mending Wall" tells the story of two neighbors and their yearly spring ritual of mending the stone wall that separates their farms. That the two men are separated by more than just the wall, is revealed by the narrator's observations as one doggedly insists the wall be maintained, and the other questions why.

Click Here To Read "Mending Wall

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"Birches"--another favorite. Seeing a stand of birches, a man is fondly reminded of his boyhood days, when he used to climb and swing on the slender trees. The reader also re-lives the experience, though chances are, it's not something the reader has ever done.

Click Here To Read "Birches"

"Nothing Gold Can Stay" is a short but poignant poem, containing only eight lines. It starts with these:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.

Frost could imbue so few lines with so much meaning.

Click To Read "Nothing Gold Can Stay"

"Fire And Ice" takes a look at possible ways the world may end, and also at the nature of human emotion. Another short work, it contains only nine lines, but packs a punch!

To Read "Fire And Ice" Click Here

"The Gift Outright" is the poem Frost recited at JFK's inauguration, when unable to read the one he'd written. When he wrote it (1942) and even in 1961,the poem was considered very patriotic. Recently, it has drawn criticism for its assumption that European colonists were the only Americans. I was bothered by this, too, when I read it for the first time. But, taken in the context of its time, it's possible to appreciate its intention. I do love these last lines describing a young America:

(we gave ourselves outright)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

Click Here To Read "The Gift Outright"

The Poetry of Robert Frost:
The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged

The Voice of the Poet:
Robert Frost

In 3 words I can sum up everything I know in life...it goes on! Robert Frost. Vinyl wall art Inspirational quotes and saying home decor decal sticker