Robert Frost Biography and List of Works

American poet, one of the finest of rural New England's 20th century pastoral poets. Frost published his first books in Great Britain in the 1910s, but he soon became the most read poet in his own country. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize four times.

FIRE AND ICE

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also greater
And would suffice.

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California. His father, a journalist and local politician, died when Frost was eleven years old. His Scottish mother resumed her career as a schoolteacher to support her family. The family lived in Lawrence, Massachusetts, with Frost's paternal grandfather. In 1892 Frost graduated from a high school and attended Dartmouth College for a few months. Over the next ten years he held a number of jobs, Frost worked among others in a textile mill and taught Latin at his mother's school in Methuen, Massachusetts.

In 1894 the New York Independent published Frost's poem 'My Butterfly' and he had five poems privately printed. In 1895 he married a former schoolmate, Elinor White; they had six children. Frost worked as a teacher and continued to write and publish his poems in magazines.

From 1897 to 1899 Frost studied at Harvard, but left without receiving a degree. He moved to Derry, New Hampshire, working there as a cobbler, farmed and teacher at Pinkerton Academy and at the state normal school in Plymouth.

In 1912 Frost sold his farm and took his family to England. There he published his first collection of poems, A BOY'S WILL, was published when he was 39. It was followed by NORTH BOSTON (1914), which gained international reputation. The collection contains some of Frost's best-known poems: 'Mending Wall,' 'The Death of the Hired Man,' 'Home Burial,' 'A Servant to Servants,' 'After Apple-Picking,' and 'The Wood-Pile.' The themes were drawn from his own life, recurrent losses, written with blank verse or looser free verse of dialogue.

While in England Frost was deeply influenced by such English poets as Rupert Brooke. After returning to the US in 1915, Frost bought a farm near Franconia, New Hampshire, and taught later at Amherst College (1916-38) and Michigan universities. In 1916 Frost was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. On the same year appeared his third collection of verse, MOUNTAIN INTERVAL, which contained such poems as 'The Road Not Taken,' 'The Oven Bird,' 'Birches,' and 'The Hill Wife.' Frost's poems show deep appreciation of natural world and sensibility about the human situation. His images - woods, stars, houses, brooks, - are usually taken from everyday life, and with his down-to-earth approach to his subjects, it is easy for the reader to follow the poet into deeper truths. Often Frost used the rhythms and vocabulary of ordinary speech or even the looser free verse of dialogue.

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.
(from 'The Road Not Taken')

In 1920 Frost purchased a farm in South Shaftsbury, Vermont, near Middlebury College where he co founded the Bread Loaf School and Conference of English. His wife died in 1938 and he lost four of his children - his son, a frustrated poet and farmer, committed suicide. Frost also suffered from depression and the continual self-doubt led him desperately to desire a Nobel Prize that never came.

Frost continued to write poetry prolifically into old age. He participated in the inauguration of President John Kennedy in 1961 by reciting two of his poems, 'Dedication' and 'The Gift Outright.' He travelled in 1962 in the Soviet Union as a member of a goodwill group. Among the honours and rewards Frost received were tributes from the U.S. Senate (1950), the American Academy of Poets (1953), New York University (1956), and the Huntington Hartford Foundation (1958), the Congressional Gold Medal (1962), the Edward MacDowell Medal (1962). In 1930 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Amherst College appointed him Saimpson Lecturer for Life (1949), and in 1958 he was made poetry consultant for the Library of Congress.

At the time of his death on January 29, 1963, Frost was regarded as the unofficial poet laureate of the US. In his poems Frost depicted the fields and farms of New England, observing the details of rural life, endowed with universal meaning. Although his works were generally praised, the lack of seriousness concerning social and political problems of the 1930s annoyed some critics.

For further reading: The Poetry of Robert Frost by R.A. Brower (1960); Robert Frost by P.L. Gerber (1966, rev. ed. 1982); Frost by E. Jennings (1966); Robert Frost: The Early Years, 1874-1915 by L. Thompson (1966); Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915-1938 by L. Thompson (1970); Robert Frost by E. Barry (1973); Robert Frost: The Later Years, 1938-1963 by L. Thompson and R.H. Winnick (1976); Robert Frost and New England by J.C. Kemp (1979); Robert Frost Handbook by J.L. Potter (1980); Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered W.H. Pritchard (1984); A Restless Spirit: The Story of Robert Frost by N. Bober (1991); The Poetry of Robert Frost by J.R. Doyle Jr. (1991); The Poems of Robert Frost by M. Narcus (1991) - For further information: Robert Lee Frost - SEE Joseph Brodsky, who mentioned Robert Frost in his Nobel Award speech. See also English poet Robert Browning (1812-89), whose works have connections with Frost's monologues.

A BOY'S WILL, (1913)