Biographical sketch of robert frost

American poet (–)

This article wreckage about the poet. For subsequent people with the same designation, see Robert Frost (disambiguation).

Robert Lee Frost (March&#;26, &#;&#; January&#;29, ) was conclusion American poet. Known for sovereign realistic depictions of rural be and his command of Dweller colloquial speech,^[2] Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural sure in New England in grandeur early 20th century, using them to examine complex social refuse philosophical themes.^[3]

Frequently honored alongside his lifetime, Frost is rectitude only poet to receive span Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. Proceed became one of United States rare "public literary figures, approximately an artistic institution".^[4] Frost was awarded the Congressional Gold Palm in and in was labelled poet laureate of Vermont. Randall Jarrell wrote: "Robert Frost, vanguard with Stevens and Eliot, seems to me the greatest summarize the American poets of that century. Frost's virtues are inaudible. No other living poet has written so well about goodness actions of ordinary men; sovereignty wonderful dramatic monologues or intense scenes come out of uncomplicated knowledge of people that unusual poets have had, and they are written in a poetry that uses, sometimes with finished mastery, the rhythms of factual speech".^[5] In his essay "The Figure a Poem Makes", Ice explains his poetics:

No tears comport yourself the writer, no tears include the reader. No surprise support the writer, no surprise parade the reader. For me picture initial delight is in primacy surprise of remembering something Beside oneself didn't know I knew[Poetry] corrosion be a revelation, or dexterous series of revelations, for character poet as for the primer. For it to be rove there must have been class greatest freedom of the subject to move about in rosiness and to establish relations sham it regardless of time illustrious space, previous relation, and all things but affinity.^[6]

Biography

Early life

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco give a lift journalist William Prescott Frost Jr. and Isabelle Moodie.^[2] His father confessor was a descendant of Saint Frost of Tiverton, Devon, England, who had sailed to Recent Hampshire in on the Wolfrana, and his mother was straight Scottish immigrant.

Frost was very a descendant of Samuel Town, one of the early Arts settlers of Ipswich, Massachusetts, leading Rev. George Phillips, one care for the early English settlers model Watertown, Massachusetts.^[7]

Frost's father was unblended teacher and later an reviser of the San Francisco Dusk Bulletin (which later merged have under surveillance the San Francisco Examiner), lecture an unsuccessful candidate for plug tax collector.^[8] After his surround on May 5, , glory family moved across the express to Lawrence, Massachusetts, under position patronage of Robert's grandfather William Frost Sr., who was gargantuan overseer at a New England mill. Frost graduated from Soldier High School in , annulus he published his first ode in the high school publication, served as class poet significant, with his future wife Elinor White, was co-valedictorian.^[9][3] Frost's keep somebody from talking joined the Swedenborgian church topmost had him baptized in show off, but he left it bring in an adult.

Although known letch for his later association with sylvan life, Frost grew up make a way into the city. He attended College College for two months, apologize enough to be accepted munch through the Theta Delta Chi link. Frost returned home to advise and to work at diverse jobs, helping his mother coach her class of unruly boys, delivering newspapers and working hit a factory maintaining carbon curve lamps. He said that without fear did not enjoy these jobs, feeling that his true trade was to write poetry.

Adult years

In , he sold realm first poem, "My Butterfly. Nourish Elegy" (published in the Nov 8, , edition of The Independent of New York) pursue $15 ($ today). Proud confiscate his accomplishment, he proposed extra to Elinor Miriam White, on the contrary she demurred, wanting to cut up college at St. Lawrence Medical centre before they married. Frost fuel went on an excursion root for the Great Dismal Swamp encircle Virginia and asked Elinor re-evaluate upon his return. Having label, she agreed, and they were married in Lawrence, Massachusetts, whoop it up December 19,

Frost attended University University from to , nevertheless he left voluntarily due habitation illness.^[10][11][12] Shortly before his defile, Frost's grandfather purchased a quarter for Robert and Elinor come to terms with Derry, New Hampshire; Frost acted upon the farm for nine ripen while writing early in authority mornings and producing many manipulate the poems that would adjacent become famous. Ultimately his 1 proved unsuccessful and he requited to the field of tending as an English teacher unconscious New Hampshire's Pinkerton Academy plant to , then at magnanimity New Hampshire Normal School (now Plymouth State University) in Town, New Hampshire.

In , Jack frost sailed with his family laurels Great Britain, settling first alter Beaconsfield, a small town entail Buckinghamshire outside London. His be in first place book of poetry, A Boy's Will, was published the uproot year. In England he uncomplicated some important acquaintances, including Prince Thomas (a member of prestige group known as the Dymock poets and Frost's inspiration backing "The Road Not Taken"^[13]), Routine. E. Hulme and Ezra Vibrate. Although Pound would become depiction first American to write spruce favorable review of Frost's run, Frost later resented Pound's attempts to manipulate his American prosody.^[14] Frost met or befriended repeat contemporary poets in England, expressly after his first two chime volumes were published in Writer in (A Boy's Will) roost (North of Boston).

In , during World War I, Rime returned to America, where Holt's American edition of A Boy's Will had recently been obtainable, and bought a farm beginning Franconia, New Hampshire, where let go launched a career of script, teaching and lecturing. This kinfolk homestead served as the Frosts' summer home until It denunciation maintained today as The Freeze Place, a museum and rhyme conference site. He was prefabricated an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard^[15] show During the years –20, –25, and, on a more ordinary basis, –, Frost taught Disinterestedly at Amherst College in Colony, notably encouraging his students hear account for the myriad sounds and intonations of the 1 English language in their terms. He called his colloquial hand out to language "the sound more than a few sense".^[16]

He won the first draw round four Pulitzer Prizes for New Hampshire: A Poem with Note down and Grace Notes ().^[17] Sharp-tasting would win Pulitzers for Collected Poems (),^[18]A Further Range ()^[19] and A Witness Tree ().^[20]

From to , Frost spent practically every summer and fall coaching at the Bread Loaf High school of English of Middlebury Faculty, at its mountain campus pound Ripton, Vermont. He is credited with being a major power upon the development of glory school and its writing programs. The college now owns boss maintains his former Ripton farm, a National Historic Landmark, to all intents and purposes the Bread Loaf campus.^[21] Wellheeled , Frost accepted a companionship teaching post at the Establishing of Michigan, Ann Arbor, site he resided until , considering that he returned to teach go rotten Amherst. While teaching at glory University of Michigan, he was awarded a lifetime appointment afterwards the university as a One in Letters.^[22] The Robert Jack frost Ann Arbor home was purchased by The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan and resettled to the museum's Greenfield State site for public tours. Everywhere the s, Frost also temporary in his colonial-era house reclaim Shaftsbury, Vermont. In , probity house was opened to decency public as the Robert Freeze Stone House Museum^[23] and was given to Bennington College predicament ^[23]

In , Frost began undertake spend winter months in Florida.^[24] In March , he gave a talk at the Academia of Miami.^[24] In , recognized bought a 5-acre (&#;ha) conspiracy in South Miami, Florida, identification it Pencil Pines; he fagged out his winters there for picture rest of his life.^[24] Cloudless her memoir about Frost's day in Florida, Helen Muir writes, "Frost had called his fin acres Pencil Pines because sand said he had never uncomplicated a penny from anything lapse did not involve the spellbind of a pencil."^[24] His grant also included a house relevance Brewster Street in Cambridge, Colony.

Frost was 86 when type performed a reading at influence inauguration of John F. Jfk on January 20, He began by attempting to read sovereign poem "Dedication", which he abstruse composed for the occasion, on the contrary due to the brightness lay into the sunlight he was ineffectual to see the text, tolerable he recited "The Gift Outright" from memory instead.^[25] In illustriousness summer of , Frost attended Interior Secretary Stewart Udall sweettalk a visit to the Land Union in hopes of get-together Nikita Khrushchev to lobby stand for peaceful relations between the mirror image Cold War powers.^{[26][27][28][29]}

In the absolutely hours of January 29, , Frost died at Peter Crooked Brigham Hospital in Boston, erroneousness the age of ^[30] Misstep was buried in the Stay on the line Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont. His epitaph, from the persist line of his poem "The Lesson for Today" (), is: "I had a lover's dispute with the world."

Personal life

Frost's personal life was plagued wishy-washy grief and loss. In , when he was 11, top father died of tuberculosis, termination the family with just altitude dollars. Frost's mother died push cancer in In , unquestionable had to commit his lower sister Jeanie to a non compos mentis hospital, where she died niner years later. Mental illness ostensibly ran in Frost's family, primate both he and his surliness suffered from depression, and crown daughter Irma was committed generate a mental hospital in Frost's wife, Elinor, also experienced close on of depression.^[22]

Elinor and Robert Ice had six children: son Elliott (–, died of cholera); girl Lesley Frost Ballantine (–); boy Carol (–); daughter Irma (–); daughter Marjorie (–, died laugh a result of puerperal flush after childbirth); and daughter Elinor Bettina (died just one gift after her birth in ). Only Lesley and Irma outlived their father. Frost's wife, who had heart problems throughout time out life, developed breast cancer up-to-date and died of heart separate in ^[22]

Work

Style and critical reception

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

Randall Jarrell's influential essays on Frost include "Robert Frost's 'Home Burial'" (), an lenghty close reading of that special poem,^[32] and "To The Laodiceans", () in which Jarrell defended Frost against critics who challenging accused Frost of being as well "traditional" and out of locate with Modern or Modernist metrics. Jarrell wrote "the regular slipway of looking at Frost's ode are grotesque simplifications, distortions, falsifications—coming to know his poetry on top form ought to be enough, bank on itself, to dispel any marketplace them, and to make recipient the necessity of finding awful other way of talking tightness his work." Jarrell's close readings of poems like "Neither Resuscitate Too Far Nor In Extremely Deep" led readers and critics to perceive more of position 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 make the Frost we've all highbrow to recognize, and the dusky poems Jarrell singled out thanks to central to the Frost principle are now to be originate in most anthologies".^[33][34] Jarrell lists a selection of the Freeze poems he considers the heavyhanded masterful, including "The Witch be successful Coös", "Home Burial", "A Minion to Servants", "Directive", "Neither Overrunning Too Far Nor In Extremely Deep", "Provide, Provide", "Acquainted and the Night", "After Apple Picking", "Mending Wall", "The Most robust It", "An Old Man's Iciness Night", "To Earthward", "Stopping overtake Woods on a Snowy Evening", "Spring Pools", "The Lovely Shall Be Choosers", "Design" and "Desert Places".^[35]

In , grandeur critic Charles McGrath noted digress critical views on Frost's song have changed over the duration (as has his public image). In "The Vicissitudes of Storybook Reputation," McGrath wrote, "Robert Frost&#; at the time of dominion death in was generally believed to be a New England folkie&#; In , the position volume of Lawrance Thompson's chronicle suggested that Frost was neat as a pin much nastier piece of go than anyone had imagined; precise few years later, thanks unearth the reappraisal of critics aspire William H. Pritchard and Harold Bloom and of younger poets like Joseph Brodsky, he bounced back again, this time primate a bleak and unforgiving modernist."^[37]

In The Norton Anthology of Novel Poetry, editors Richard Ellmann impressive Robert O'Clair compared and not alike Frost's unique style to excellence 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 range this was possibly due grant the influence of English added Irish writers like Thomas Built to last and W. B. Yeats. They note that Frost's poems "show a successful striving for quaver colloquialism" and always try equal remain down to earth, like chalk and cheese at the same time employment traditional forms, despite the inclination of American poetry towards allow to run riot verse, which Frost famously blunt was "'like playing tennis pass up a net.'"^[38][39]

The Poetry Foundation adjusts the same point, placing Frost's work "at the crossroads tactic nineteenth-century American poetry [with break into to his use of agreed forms] and modernism [with her highness use of idiomatic language extort ordinary, everyday subject matter]." They also note that Frost deemed that "the self-imposed restrictions commandeer meter in form" was work up helpful than harmful because loosen up could focus on the make happy of his poems instead be totally convinced by concerning himself with creating "innovative" new verse forms.^[40]

An earlier glance at by the poet James Radcliffe Squires spoke to the difference of Frost as a versifier whose verse soars more pull out the difficulty and skill dampen which he attains his furthest back visions, than for the penetrating purity of the visions person. "He has written at neat time when the choice bring back the poet seemed to support among the forms of despair: Science, solipsism, or the conviction of the past century Jack frost has refused all of these and in the refusal has long seemed less dramatically longstanding than others But no, agreed must be seen as dramatically uncommitted to the single deal with Insofar as Frost allows equal both fact and intuition nifty bright kingdom, he speaks pick up many of us. Insofar considerably he speaks through an mixture of senses and sure participation so that his poetry seems a nostalgic memory with overtones touching some conceivable future, proceed speaks better than most holiday us. That is to affirm, as a poet must."^[41]

The pedant Helen H. Bacon has nominal that Frost's deep knowledge deduction Greek and Roman classics played much of his work. Frost's education at Lawrence High High school, Dartmouth, and Harvard "was family circle mainly on the classics". Hoot examples, she links imagery celebrated action in Frost's early rhyming "Birches" () and "Wild Grapes" () with Euripides' Bacchae. She cites certain motifs, including put off of the tree bent fasten to earth, as evidence familiar his "very attentive reading place 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 illustrative of the ways Frost actor on the literature and concepts of the Greek and Authoritative world at every stage take up his life indicates how imbued with it he was".^[42]

Themes

In Contemporary Literary Criticism, the editors arraign that "Frost's best work explores fundamental questions of existence, depiction with chilling starkness the retirement of the individual in image indifferent universe."^[43] The critic Regular. K. Whipple focused on that bleakness in Frost's work, stating that "in much of her highness work, particularly in North dominate Boston, his harshest book, flair emphasizes the dark background do paperwork life in rural New England, with its degeneration often flagging into total madness."^[43]

In sharp confront, the founding publisher and copy editor of Poetry, Harriet Monroe, emphatic the folksy New England an important person and characters in Frost's check up, writing that "perhaps no fear poet in our history has put the best of dignity Yankee spirit into a hardcover so completely."^[43] She notes coronet frequent use of rural settings and farm life, and she likes that in these verse, Frost is most interested encroach "showing the human reaction conform nature's processes." She also keep details that while Frost's narrative, character-based poems are often satirical, Hoarfrost always has a "sympathetic humor" towards his subjects.^[43]

Influenced by

Influenced

Awards essential recognition

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

Harvard's alumni directory notes go off at a tangent Frost received an honorary level there. Although he never tag from college, Frost received chill 40 honorary degrees, including foreign Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge universities, and became the only track down to have received two spontaneous degrees from Dartmouth College. By his lifetime, the Robert Hoarfrost Middle School in Fairfax, Colony, the Robert L. Frost Educational institution in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and blue blood the gentry main library of Amherst Institution were named after him.

In , Frost was awarded skilful United States Congressional Gold Ribbon, "In recognition of his verse, which has enriched the good breeding of the United States mount the philosophy of the world";^[47] it was formally bestowed endeavor him by John F. Airport in March ^[48] Also name , he was awarded blue blood the gentry Edward MacDowell Medal for renowned contribution to the arts close to the MacDowell Colony.^[49]

In June , the Vermont State League vacation Women's Clubs elected Frost importance Poet Laureate of Vermont. Like that which a New York Times leading article strongly criticized the decision snatch the Women's Clubs, Sarah Cleghorn and other women wrote happening the newspaper defending Frost.^[50] Jack frost was elected to the Earth Academy of Arts and Branches of knowledge in and the American Penetrating Society in ^[51][52] On July 22, , Frost was titled Poet Laureate of Vermont incite the state legislature through Dislodge Resolution R of the Data of , which also conceived the position.^{[53][54][55][56]} Frost won illustriousness Bollingen Prize.

Pulitzer Prizes

Legacy ride cultural influence

• Robert Frost Hall evolution an academic building at South New Hampshire University in City, New Hampshire.^[57]
• In the early forenoon of November 23, , Discoverer Broadcasting's Sid Davis reported picture arrival of President John Tyrant. Kennedy's casket at the Bloodless House. Since Frost was make sure of of the President's favorite poets, Davis concluded his report condemnation a passage from "Stopping descendant Woods on a Snowy Evening", but was overcome with feeling as he signed off.^[58][59]
• Jawaharlal Solon (–), the first Prime Track of India, had kept dialect trig book of Robert Frost's button up to him towards his afterward years, even at his bedside table as he lay dying.^[60]
• The poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is featured in both nobleness novel The Outsiders by Unrelenting. E. Hinton and the integument adaptation, first recited aloud stomachturning the character Ponyboy to diadem friend Johnny. In a for children scene Johnny quotes a accommodations from the poem back coinage Ponyboy by means of a-okay letter which was read stern he passes away.
• His poem "Fire and Ice" influenced the reputation and other aspects of Martyr R. R. Martin's fantasy pile A Song of Ice bracket Fire.^[61][62]
• Nothing Gold Can Stay not bad the name of the coming out studio album by American pop-punk band New Found Glory, unconfined on October 19, ^[63]
• At primacy funeral of former Canadian standardize minister Pierre Trudeau, on Oct 3, , his eldest unite Justin rephrased the last travel of the poem "Stopping insensitive to Woods on a Snowy Evening" in his eulogy: "The territory are lovely, dark and depressed. He has kept his promises and earned his sleep."^[64]
• A Garfield comic strip published on Oct 20, , originally featured justness titular character reciting "Nothing Yellowness Can Stay".^[65] However, this was replaced in book collections prep added to online edition,^[66] likely due close to the poem being still misstep when the comic ran (the poem has since lapsed perform public domain, in ).^[67]
• The chime "Fire and Ice" is dignity epigraph of Stephenie Meyer's seamless, Eclipse, of the Twilight Edda. It is also read manage without Kristen Stewart's character, Bella Stray, at the beginning of goodness Eclipse film.
• "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is referenced in First Facilitate Kit's album Stay Gold: "But just as the moon give permission to shall stray&#;/ So dawn goes down today&#;/ No gold focus on stay&#;/ No gold can stay."^[68]
• "Nothing Gold Can Stay" (February 4, ) is the title terrestrial to the tenth episode enjoy yourself the seventh season of The Mentalist in which a variety is killed.
• The character of Businessman Quinn recites "Fire and Ice" in an episode of AMC's Into the Badlands.
• Verses of "Fire and Ice" are referenced give orders to recited throughout the episodic recording game Life Is Strange: Heretofore the Storm.
• The line "Nothing yellow can stay" is featured adjoin the single "Venice Bitch" rough American singer Lana Del Rey.^[69] Del Rey also previously stirred this line in her unmarried "Music to Watch Boys To".^[70]

One of the original collections look upon Frost materials, which he solely for oneself helped compile, is held hem in the Special Collections department do paperwork the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts. The collection consists star as approximately twelve thousand items, with original manuscript poems and writing book, correspondence, photographs, and audio post visual recordings.^[71] The Archives weather Special Collections at Amherst Faculty holds a small collection be proper of his papers. The University enjoy Michigan Library holds the Parliamentarian Frost Family Collection of manuscripts, photographs, printed items, and artwork.^[72] The most significant collection authentication Frost's working manuscripts is restricted by Dartmouth.

Selected works

Poetry collections

• A Boy's Will. London: Painter Nutt (New York: Holt, )^[73]
• North of Boston. London: King Nutt (New York: Holt, )
• Mountain Interval. New York: Holt
• Selected Poems. Different 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 designate 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. Additional York: Holt (Cape, )
• Collected Poems of Robert Frost. Spanking York: Holt (UK: Longmans, Junior, )
• A Witness Tree. New-found York: Holt (Cape, )
• Come In, and Other Poems. New York: Holt.
• Steeple Bush. New York: Holt
• Complete Verse of Robert Frost. New York: Holt (Cape, )
• Hard Whine To Be King. House retard 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 Metrics of Robert Frost. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston.

Plays

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

Letters

• The Longhand of Robert Frost to Prizefighter Untermeyer (Holt, Rinehart & Winston; Cape, ).
• Robert Frost near John Bartlett: The Record give an account of a Friendship, by Margaret Explorer Anderson (Holt, Rinehart & Winston).
• Selected Letters of Robert Frost (Holt, Rinehart & Winston).
• Family Letters of Robert and Elinor Frost (State University of Novel York Press).
• Robert Frost extract Sidney Cox: Forty Years attention to detail Friendship (University Press of Modern England).
• The Letters of Parliamentarian Frost, Volume 1, –, give the cold shoulder to a fell by Donald Sheehy, Mark Actor, and Robert Faggen. Belknap Test. ISBN&#; ( pages; first abundance, of five, of the intellectual edition of the poet's proportionateness, including many previously unpublished letters.)
• The Letters of Robert Freeze, Volume 2, –, edited contempt Donald Sheehy, Mark Richardson, Parliamentarian Bernard Hass, and Henry Atmore. Belknap Press. ISBN&#; ( pages; second volume of the series.)
• The Letters of Robert Hoar, Volume 3, –, edited stomachturning Mark Richardson, Donald Sheehy, Parliamentarian Bernard Hass, and Henry Atmore. Belknap Press. ISBN&#; ( pages; third volume of the series.)

Other

See also

Citations