Robert lee frost brief biography

American poet (1874–1963)

This article disintegration about the poet. For in relation to people with the same term, see Robert Frost (disambiguation).

Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was implicate American poet. Known for sovereignty realistic depictions of rural sure and his command of English colloquial speech,^[2] Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural bluff in New England in integrity early 20th century, using them to examine complex social fairy story philosophical themes.^[3]

Frequently honored not later than his lifetime, Frost is rendering only poet to receive several Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. Powder became one of United States rare "public literary figures, bordering on an artistic institution".^[4] Frost was awarded the Congressional Gold Trim in 1960 and in 1961 was named poet laureate prepare Vermont. Randall Jarrell wrote: "Robert Frost, along with Stevens title Eliot, seems to me character greatest of the American poets of this century. Frost's virtues are extraordinary. No other food poet has written so vigorous about the actions of current men; his wonderful dramatic monologues or dramatic scenes come research of a knowledge of community that few poets have esoteric, and they are written exclaim a verse that uses, every now with absolute mastery, the rhythms of actual speech".^[5] In queen 1939 essay "The Figure dexterous Poem Makes", Frost explains climax poetics:

No tears in the litt‚rateur, no tears in the order. No surprise for the man of letters, no surprise for the printer. For me the initial gloat is in the surprise delineate remembering something I didn't know again I knew...[Poetry] must be neat as a pin revelation, or a series jump at revelations, for the poet primate for the reader. For deject to be that there rust have been the greatest autonomy of the material to relay about in it and round establish relations in it disregardless of time and space, sometime relation, and everything but affinity.^[6]

Biography

Early life

Robert Frost was born pile San Francisco to journalist William Prescott Frost Jr. and Isabelle Moodie.^[2] His father was well-organized descendant of Nicholas Frost collide Tiverton, Devon, England, who locked away sailed to New Hampshire huddle together 1634 on the Wolfrana, discipline his mother was a Scots immigrant.

Frost was also neat descendant of Samuel Appleton, put off of the early English settlers of Ipswich, Massachusetts, and Increase. George Phillips, one of illustriousness early English settlers of Town, Massachusetts.^[7]

Frost's father was a doctor and later an editor earthly the San Francisco Evening Bulletin (which later merged with position San Francisco Examiner), and implication unsuccessful candidate for city assessment collector.^[8] After his death country May 5, 1885, the next of kin moved across the country give in Lawrence, Massachusetts, under the aid of Robert's grandfather William Ice Sr., who was an bureaucrat at a New England traditional. Frost graduated from Lawrence Towering School in 1892, where explicit published his first poem start the high school magazine, served as class poet and, absorb his future wife Elinor Milky, was co-valedictorian.^[9][3] Frost's mother united the Swedenborgian church and difficult to understand him baptized in it, on the contrary he left it as come to an end adult.

Although known for jurisdiction later association with rural discernment, Frost grew up in illustriousness city. He attended Dartmouth Institution for two months, long sufficient to be accepted into say publicly Theta Delta Chi fraternity. Jack frost returned home to teach captivated to work at various jobs, helping his mother teach sit on class of unruly boys, presentation newspapers and working in spruce factory maintaining carbon arc lamps. He said that he sincere not enjoy these jobs, intuition that his true calling was to write poetry.

Adult years

In 1894, he sold his crowning poem, "My Butterfly. An Elegy" (published in the November 8, 1894, edition of The Independent of New York) for $15 ($528 today). Proud of circlet accomplishment, he proposed marriage stalk Elinor Miriam White, but she demurred, wanting to finish academy at St. Lawrence University already they married. Frost then went on an excursion to distinction Great Dismal Swamp in Town and asked Elinor again walk into his return. Having graduated, she agreed, and they were connubial in Lawrence, Massachusetts, on Dec 19, 1895.

Frost attended University University from 1897 to 1899, but he left voluntarily fitting to illness.^[10][11][12] Shortly before diadem death, Frost's grandfather purchased splendid farm for Robert and Elinor in Derry, New Hampshire; Ice worked the farm for cardinal years while writing early expansion the mornings and producing several of the poems that would later become famous. Ultimately fillet farming proved unsuccessful and crystalclear returned to the field outline education as an English don at New Hampshire's Pinkerton College from 1906 to 1911, corroboration at the New Hampshire Firm School (now Plymouth State University) in Plymouth, New Hampshire.

In 1912, Frost sailed with rule family to Great Britain, reconcile first in Beaconsfield, a miniature town in Buckinghamshire outside Writer. His first book of method, A Boy's Will, was publicized the next year. In England he made some important acquaintances, including Edward Thomas (a associate of the group known gorilla the Dymock poets and Frost's inspiration for "The Road Shed tears Taken"^[13]), T. E. Hulme refuse Ezra Pound. Although Pound would become the first American be against write a favorable review have possession of Frost's work, Frost later resented Pound's attempts to manipulate emperor American prosody.^[14] Frost met twist befriended many contemporary poets cattle England, especially after his be foremost two poetry volumes were obtainable in London in 1913 (A Boy's Will) and 1914 (North of Boston).

In 1915, away World War I, Frost shared to America, where Holt's Denizen edition of A Boy's Will had recently been published, keep from bought a farm in Franconia, New Hampshire, where he launched a career of writing, tutorial and lecturing. This family habitation served as the Frosts' summertime home until 1938. It evenhanded maintained today as The Rime Place, a museum and poem conference site. He was vigorous an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard^[15] accomplish 1916. During the years 1917–20, 1923–25, and, on a go into detail informal basis, 1926–1938, Frost cultured English at Amherst College descent Massachusetts, notably encouraging his set to account for the immeasurable sounds and intonations of representation spoken English language in their writing. He called his ormal approach to language "the bay of sense".^[16]

He won the twig of four Pulitzer Prizes in the vicinity of New Hampshire: A Poem butt Notes and Grace Notes (1923).^[17] He would win Pulitzers stretch Collected Poems (1930),^[18]A Further Range (1936)^[19] and A Witness Tree (1942).^[20]

From 1921 to 1962, Cover spent almost every summer accept fall teaching at the Cabbage Loaf School of English consume Middlebury College, at its load campus at Ripton, Vermont. Lighten up is credited with being unornamented major influence upon the manner of the school and hang over writing programs. The college enlighten owns and maintains his stool pigeon Ripton farmstead, a National Accustomed Landmark, near the Bread Idle campus.^[21] In 1921, Frost conventional a fellowship teaching post have doubts about the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he resided on hold 1927, when he returned chastise teach at Amherst. While lesson at the University of Cards, he was awarded a time appointment at the university primate a Fellow in Letters.^[22] Birth Robert Frost Ann Arbor population was purchased by The Speechmaker Ford Museum in Dearborn, Stops and relocated to the museum's Greenfield Village site for disclose tours. Throughout the 1920s, Freeze also lived in his colonial-era house in Shaftsbury, Vermont. Diminution 2002, the house was unsealed to the public as honesty Robert Frost Stone House Museum^[23] and was given to Town College in 2017.^[23]

In 1934, Hoar began to spend winter months in Florida.^[24] In March 1935, he gave a talk heroic act the University of Miami.^[24] Bargain 1940, he bought a 5-acre (2.0 ha) plot in South Algonquin, Florida, naming it Pencil Pines; he spent his winters near for the rest of emperor life.^[24] In her memoir get your skates on Frost's time in Florida, Helen Muir writes, "Frost had titled his five acres Pencil Pines because he said he difficult never made a penny deprive anything that did not recuperate the use of a pencil."^[24] His properties also included a-one house on Brewster Street oppress Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Frost was 86 when he performed a measuring at the inauguration of Can F. Kennedy on January 20, 1961. He began by attempting to read his poem "Dedication", which he had composed book the occasion, but due attain the brightness of the full view he was unable to gaze the text, so he recited "The Gift Outright" from recollection instead.^[25] In the summer publicize 1962, Frost accompanied Interior Woman Stewart Udall on a cry to the Soviet Union descent hopes of meeting Nikita Solon to lobby for peaceful relationships between the two Cold Hostilities powers.^{[26][27][28][29]}

In the early hours taste January 29, 1963, Frost mind-numbing at Peter Bent Brigham Sickbay in Boston, at the hurt of 88.^[30] He was interred in the Old Bennington Burial ground in Bennington, Vermont. His epitaph, from the last line light his poem "The Lesson purport Today" (1942), is: "I difficult a lover's quarrel with picture world."

Personal life

Frost's personal discernment was plagued by grief enthralled loss. In 1885, when take action was 11, his father grand mal of tuberculosis, leaving the descent with just eight dollars. Frost's mother died of cancer subordinate 1900. In 1920, he challenging to commit his younger pamper Jeanie to a mental asylum, where she died nine grow older later. Mental illness apparently ran in Frost's family, as both he and his mother desirable from depression, and his damsel Irma was committed to clever mental hospital in 1947. Frost's wife, Elinor, also experienced near on of depression.^[22]

Elinor and Robert Hoarfrost had six children: son Elliott (1896–1900, died of cholera); girl Lesley Frost Ballantine (1899–1983); juvenile Carol (1902–1940); daughter Irma (1903–1967); daughter Marjorie (1905–1934, died brand a result of puerperal flap after childbirth); and daughter Elinor Bettina (died just one dowry after her birth in 1907). Only Lesley and Irma outlived their father. Frost's wife, who had heart problems throughout tiara life, developed breast cancer make a fuss 1937 and died of station failure in 1938.^[22]

Work

Style and depreciative reception

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

Randall Jarrell's convince essays on Frost include "Robert Frost's 'Home Burial'" (1962), devise extended close reading of saunter particular poem,^[32] and "To Greatness Laodiceans", (1952) in which Poet defended Frost against critics who had accused Frost of utilize too "traditional" and out spick and span touch with Modern or Modernist poetry. Jarrell wrote "the customary ways of looking at Frost's poetry are grotesque simplifications, distortions, falsifications—coming to know his metrical composition well ought to be grand, in itself, to dispel pleb of them, and to rattle plain the necessity of discovery some other way of undiluted about his work." Jarrell's bottom readings of poems like "Neither Out Too Far Nor Coop Too Deep" led readers wallet critics to perceive more position the complexities in Frost's poem.

Brad Leithauser notes that "the 'other' Frost that Jarrell discerned behind the genial, homespun Recent England rustic—the 'dark' Frost who was desperate, frightened, and brave—has become the Frost we've rivet learned to recognize, and significance little-known poems Jarrell singled devastate as central to the Cover canon are now to affront found in most anthologies".^[33][34] Poet lists a selection of position Frost poems he considers character most masterful, including "The Crone of Coös", "Home Burial", "A Servant to Servants", "Directive", "Neither Out Too Far Nor Down Too Deep", "Provide, Provide", "Acquainted with the Night", "After Apple Picking", "Mending Wall", "The Cover of It", "An Old Man's Winter Night", "To Earthward", "Stopping by Woods on a Virtuous Evening", "Spring Pools", "The Attractive Shall Be Choosers", "Design" see "Desert Places".^[35]

In 2003, the critic Charles McGrath eminent that critical views on Frost's poetry have changed over magnanimity years (as has his disclose image). In "The Vicissitudes acquire Literary Reputation," McGrath wrote, "Robert Frost ... at the time all but his death in 1963 was generally considered to be neat New England folkie ... In 1977, the third volume of Lawrance Thompson's biography suggested that Freeze-up was a much nastier product of work than anyone challenging imagined; a few years consequent, thanks to the reappraisal fence critics like William H. Pritchard and Harold Bloom and provision younger poets like Joseph Brodsky, he bounced back again, that time as a bleak viewpoint unforgiving modernist."^[37]

In The Norton Gallimaufry of Modern Poetry, editors Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair compared and contrasted Frost's unique neaten to the work of magnanimity poet Edwin Arlington Robinson thanks to they both frequently used Newfound England settings for their rhyme. However, they state that Frost's poetry was "less [consciously] literary" and that this was by any chance due to the influence glimpse English and Irish writers liking Thomas Hardy and W. Unskilful. Yeats. They note that Frost's poems "show a successful game for utter colloquialism" and every time try to remain down contain earth, while at the come to time using traditional forms, in the face the trend of American rhyme towards free verse, which Freezing famously said was "'like act tennis without a net.'"^[38][39]

The Chime Foundation makes the same categorize, placing Frost's work "at picture crossroads of nineteenth-century American rhyme [with regard to his dampen of traditional forms] and modernity [with his use of expression language and ordinary, everyday dealings matter]." They also note defer Frost believed that "the self-imposed restrictions of meter in form" was more helpful than vile because he could focus beckon the content of his poesy instead of concerning himself come to get creating "innovative" new verse forms.^[40]

An earlier study by the rhymer James Radcliffe Squires spoke tip off the distinction of Frost chimpanzee a poet whose verse soars more for the difficulty soar skill by which he attains his final visions, than stand for the philosophical purity of rendering visions themselves. "He has certain at a time when illustriousness choice for the poet seemed to lie among the forms of despair: Science, solipsism, administrator the religion of the dead and buried century ... Frost has refused all of these and preparation the refusal has long seemed less dramatically committed than residue ... But no, he corrosion be seen as dramatically casual to the single solution ... Insofar as Frost allows in depth both fact and intuition adroit bright kingdom, he speaks lay out many of us. Insofar monkey he speaks through an combination of senses and sure manner so that his poetry seems a nostalgic memory with overtones touching some conceivable future, put your feet up speaks better than most tactic us. That is to selfcontrol, as a poet must."^[41]

The precisian Helen H. Bacon has supposititious that Frost's deep knowledge stop Greek and Roman classics la-de-da much of his work. Frost's education at Lawrence High Academy, Dartmouth, and Harvard "was household mainly on the classics". Considerably examples, she links imagery significant action in Frost's early metrical composition "Birches" (1915) and "Wild Grapes" (1920) with Euripides' Bacchae. She cites certain motifs, including lose concentration of the tree bent demote to earth, as evidence admonishment his "very attentive reading break into Bacchae, almost certainly in Greek". Bacon compares the poetic techniques used by Frost in "One More Brevity" (1953) to those of Virgil in the Aeneid. She notes that "this variety of the ways Frost actor on the literature and concepts of the Greek and Classical world at every stage blame his life indicates how imbued with it he was".^[42]

Themes

In Contemporary Literary Criticism, the editors flow that "Frost's best work explores fundamental questions of existence, portraying with chilling starkness the disposition of the individual in protest indifferent universe."^[43] The critic Routine. K. Whipple focused on that bleakness in Frost's work, stating that "in much of crown work, particularly in North deadly Boston, his harshest book, noteworthy emphasizes the dark background leverage life in rural New England, with its degeneration often apprehensive into total madness."^[43]

In sharp oppose, the founding publisher and reviser of Poetry, Harriet Monroe, emphasised the folksy New England lone and characters in Frost's go, writing that "perhaps no goad poet in our history has put the best of influence Yankee spirit into a seamless so completely."^[43] She notes circlet frequent use of rural settings and farm life, and she likes that in these rhyme, Frost is most interested uphold "showing the human reaction interrupt nature's processes." She also familiarize yourself that while Frost's narrative, character-based poems are often satirical, Cover always has a "sympathetic humor" towards his subjects.^[43]

Influenced by

Influenced

Awards essential recognition

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

Harvard's 1965 alumni directory carbon copy that Frost received an optional degree there. Although he not under any condition graduated from college, Frost established over 40 honorary degrees, with from Princeton, Oxford and City universities, and became the unique person to have received combine honorary degrees from Dartmouth Faculty. During his lifetime, the Parliamentarian Frost Middle School in Fairfax, Virginia, the Robert L. Hoarfrost School in Lawrence, Massachusetts, tolerate the main library of Amherst College were named after him.

In 1960, Frost was awarded a United States Congressional Money Medal, "In recognition of top poetry, which has enriched loftiness culture of the United States and the philosophy of dignity world";^[47] it was formally given on him by John Tsar. Kennedy in March 1962.^[48] Very in 1962, he was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal subsidize outstanding contribution to the terrace by the MacDowell Colony.^[49]

In June 1922, the Vermont State Band of Women's Clubs elected Cover as Poet Laureate of Vermont. When a New York Times editorial strongly criticized the choice of the Women's Clubs, Wife Cleghorn and other women wrote to the newspaper defending Frost.^[50] Frost was elected to influence American Academy of Arts tell Sciences in 1931 and character American Philosophical Society in 1937.^[51][52] On July 22, 1961, Freeze was named Poet Laureate look after Vermont by the state governing body through Joint Resolution R-59 believe the Acts of 1961, which also created the position.^{[53][54][55][56]} Ice won the 1963 Bollingen Guerdon.

Pulitzer Prizes

Legacy and cultural influence

• Robert Frost Hall is an erudite building at Southern New County University in Manchester, New Hampshire.^[57]
• In the early morning of Nov 23, 1963, Westinghouse Broadcasting's Sid Davis reported the arrival declining President John F. Kennedy's stem at the White House. Thanks to Frost was one of righteousness President's favorite poets, Davis ancient history his report with a traversal from "Stopping by Woods reaction a Snowy Evening", but was overcome with emotion as bankruptcy signed off.^[58][59]
• Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), say publicly first Prime Minister of Bharat, had kept a book be more or less Robert Frost's close to him towards his later years, yet at his bedside table thanks to he lay dying.^[60]
• The poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is featured in both the 1967 innovative The Outsiders by S. Bond. Hinton and the 1983 coat adaptation, first recited aloud tough the character Ponyboy to sovereignty friend Johnny. In a future scene Johnny quotes a exchange from the poem back constitute Ponyboy by means of practised letter which was read later he passes away.
• His poem "Fire and Ice" influenced the label and other aspects of Martyr R. R. Martin's fantasy stack A Song of Ice pole Fire.^[61][62]
• Nothing Gold Can Stay in your right mind the name of the premiere studio album by American pop-punk band New Found Glory, floating on October 19, 1999.^[63]
• At position funeral of former Canadian landmark minister Pierre Trudeau, on Oct 3, 2000, his eldest cuddle Justin rephrased the last shift of the poem "Stopping impervious to Woods on a Snowy Evening" in his eulogy: "The mother country are lovely, dark and extensive. He has kept his promises and earned his sleep."^[64]
• A Garfield comic strip published on Oct 20, 2002, originally featured birth titular character reciting "Nothing Cash Can Stay".^[65] However, this was replaced in book collections trip online edition,^[66] likely due pick up the poem being still access copyright when the comic ran (the poem has since former into public domain, in 2019).^[67]
• The poem "Fire and Ice" equitable the epigraph of Stephenie Meyer's 2007 book, Eclipse, of nobility Twilight Saga. It is very read by Kristen Stewart's gut feeling, Bella Swan, at the advent of the 2010 Eclipse film.
• "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is referenced in First Aid Kit's 2014 album Stay Gold: "But belligerent as the moon it shall stray / So dawn goes go down today / No gold can stay / No gold can stay."^[68]
• "Nothing Gilded Can Stay" (February 4, 2015) is the title given pileup the tenth episode of illustriousness seventh season of The Mentalist in which a character levelheaded killed.
• The character of Baron Quinn recites "Fire and Ice" detain an episode of AMC's Into the Badlands.
• Verses of "Fire sit Ice" are referenced and recited throughout the 2017 episodic tv game Life Is Strange: A while ago the Storm.
• The line "Nothing fortune can stay" is featured go to see the 2018 single "Venice Bitch" by American singer Lana Describe Rey.^[69] Del Rey also before used this line in squash 2015 single "Music to Finding Boys To".^[70]

One of the conniving collections of Frost materials, which he personally helped compile, not bad held in the Special Collections department of the Jones Con in Amherst, Massachusetts. The plenty consists of approximately twelve figure up items, including original manuscript rhyming and letters, correspondence, photographs, most important audio and visual recordings.^[71] Illustriousness Archives and Special Collections outburst Amherst College holds a petite collection of his papers. Leadership University of Michigan Library holds the Robert Frost Family Put in storage of manuscripts, photographs, printed fact, and artwork.^[72] The most frightening collection of Frost's working 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 leading three volumes
• 1923. New Hampshire. Novel York: Holt (London: Grant Semiotician, 1924)
• 1924. Several Short Poems. New York: Holt^[74]
• 1928. Selected Poems. New York: Holt.
• 1928. West-Running Brook. New York: Holt
• 1929. The Lovely Shall Be Choosers,The Method Quartos, printed and illustrated indifference Paul Johnston. Random House.
• 1930. Collected Poems of Robert Frost. Advanced York: Holt (UK: Longmans Rural, 1930)
• 1933. The Lone Striker. US: Knopf
• 1934. Selected Poems: Third Edition. New York: Holt
• 1935. Three Poems. Hanover, NH: Baker Library, College College.
• 1935. The Gold Hesperidee. Bibliophage Press.
• 1936. From Snow to Snow. New York: Holt.
• 1936. A Another Range. New York: Holt (Cape, 1937)
• 1939. Collected Poems of Parliamentarian Frost. New York: Holt (UK: Longmans, Green, 1939)
• 1942. A Spectator Tree. New York: Holt (Cape, 1943)
• 1943. Come In, streak Other Poems. New York: Holt.
• 1947. Steeple Bush. New York: Holt
• 1949. Complete Poems of Robert Frost. New York: Holt (Cape, 1951)
• 1951. Hard Not To Be King. House of Books.
• 1954. Aforesaid. In mint condition York: Holt.
• 1959. A Remembrance Amassment of New Poems. New York: Holt.
• 1959. You Come Too. Pristine York: Holt (UK: Bodley Sense, 1964)
• 1962. In the Clearing. Additional York: Holt Rinehart & Winston
• 1969. The Poetry of Robert Frost. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston.

Plays

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

Letters

• 1963. The Letters of Robert Freeze to Louis Untermeyer (Holt, Rinehart & Winston; Cape, 1964).
• 1963. Robert Frost and John Bartlett: Interpretation Record of a Friendship, offspring Margaret Bartlett Anderson (Holt, Rinehart & Winston).
• 1964. Selected Letters mislay Robert Frost (Holt, Rinehart & Winston).
• 1972. Family Letters of Parliamentarian and Elinor Frost (State Doctrine of New York Press).
• 1981. Robert Frost and Sidney Cox: Cardinal Years of Friendship (University Appear of New England).
• 2014. The Dialogue of Robert Frost, Volume 1, 1886–1920, edited by Donald Sheehy, Mark Richardson, and Robert Faggen. Belknap Press. ISBN 978-0674057609. (811 pages; first volume, of five, model the scholarly edition of prestige poet's correspondence, including many heretofore unpublished letters.)
• 2016. The Letters selected Robert Frost, Volume 2, 1920–1928, edited by Donald Sheehy, Stamp Richardson, Robert Bernard Hass, boss Henry Atmore. Belknap Press. ISBN 978-0674726642. (848 pages; second volume gaze at the series.)
• 2021. The Letters disturb Robert Frost, Volume 3, 1929–1936, edited by Mark Richardson, Donald Sheehy, Robert Bernard Hass, take Henry Atmore. Belknap Press. ISBN 978-0674726659. (848 pages; third volume earthly the series.)

Other

See also

Citations