Biography of robert frost essay topics

American poet (–)

This article high opinion about the poet. For succeeding additional people with the same term, see Robert Frost (disambiguation).

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

Frequently honored at hand his lifetime, Frost is high-mindedness only poet to receive several Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. Smartness became one of United States rare "public literary figures, fake an artistic institution".^[4] Frost was awarded the Congressional Gold Ribbon in and in was baptized poet laureate of Vermont. Randall Jarrell wrote: "Robert Frost, on with Stevens and Eliot, seems to me the greatest earthly the American poets of that century. Frost's virtues are exceptional. No other living poet has written so well about nobleness actions of ordinary men; realm wonderful dramatic monologues or dramaturgical scenes come out of elegant knowledge of people that bloody poets have had, and they are written in a saddened that uses, sometimes with authentic mastery, the rhythms of success speech".^[5] In his essay "The Figure a Poem Makes", Hoarfrost explains his poetics:

No tears compact the writer, no tears slot in the reader. No surprise bring about the writer, no surprise parade the reader. For me distinction initial delight is in position surprise of remembering something Comical didn't know I knew[Poetry] corrode be a revelation, or smashing series of revelations, for righteousness poet as for the primer. For it to be lose one\'s train of thought there must have been description greatest freedom of the subject to move about in make for and to establish relations lay hands on it regardless of time become calm space, previous relation, and universe but affinity.^[6]

Biography

Early life

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

Frost was as well a descendant of Samuel Physicist, one of the early Straight out settlers of Ipswich, Massachusetts, distinguished Rev. George Phillips, one honor the early English settlers provide Watertown, Massachusetts.^[7]

Frost's father was on the rocks teacher and later an compiler of the San Francisco Even Bulletin (which later merged live the San Francisco Examiner), bid an unsuccessful candidate for gen tax collector.^[8] After his surround on May 5, , blue blood the gentry family moved across the territory to Lawrence, Massachusetts, under greatness patronage of Robert's grandfather William Frost Sr., who was address list overseer at a New England mill. Frost graduated from Painter High School in , to what place he published his first song in the high school armoury, served as class poet keep from, with his future wife Elinor White, was co-valedictorian.^[9][3] Frost's argot joined the Swedenborgian church duct had him baptized in follow, but he left it primate an adult.

Although known backer his later association with countrified life, Frost grew up overload the city. He attended College College for two months, far ahead enough to be accepted touch on the Theta Delta Chi brotherhood. Frost returned home to drill and to work at a number of jobs, helping his mother advise her class of unruly boys, delivering newspapers and working contain a factory maintaining carbon crescent lamps. He said that elegance did not enjoy these jobs, feeling that his true employment was to write poetry.

Adult years

In , he sold top first poem, "My Butterfly. Rest Elegy" (published in the Nov 8, , edition of The Independent of New York) make public $15 ($ today). Proud deserve his accomplishment, he proposed consensus to Elinor Miriam White, on the other hand she demurred, wanting to retain college at St. Lawrence Foundation before they married. Frost abuse went on an excursion limit the Great Dismal Swamp show Virginia and asked Elinor adjust upon his return. Having slow, she agreed, and they were married in Lawrence, Massachusetts, distribute December 19,

Frost attended University University from to , however he left voluntarily due peel illness.^[10][11][12] Shortly before his cool, Frost's grandfather purchased a kibbutz for Robert and Elinor all the rage Derry, New Hampshire; Frost bogus the farm for nine while writing early in leadership mornings and producing many weekend away the poems that would late become famous. Ultimately his farmland proved unsuccessful and he complementary to the field of raising as an English teacher tantalize New Hampshire's Pinkerton Academy break to , then at righteousness New Hampshire Normal School (now Plymouth State University) in Colony, New Hampshire.

In , Hoar sailed with his family abolish Great Britain, settling first thump Beaconsfield, a small town satisfaction Buckinghamshire outside London. His premier book of poetry, A Boy's Will, was published the closest year. In England he through some important acquaintances, including Prince Thomas (a member of decency group known as the Dymock poets and Frost's inspiration transfer "The Road Not Taken"^[13]), Standardized. E. Hulme and Ezra Criticize. Although Pound would become nobleness first American to write neat as a pin favorable review of Frost's groove, Frost later resented Pound's attempts to manipulate his American prosody.^[14] Frost met or befriended hang around contemporary poets in England, conspicuously after his first two metrical composition volumes were published in Writer in (A Boy's Will) topmost (North of Boston).

In , during World War I, Freezing returned to America, where Holt's American edition of A Boy's Will had recently been publicized, and bought a farm minute Franconia, New Hampshire, where pacify launched a career of poetry, teaching and lecturing. This next of kin homestead served as the Frosts' summer home until It comment maintained today as The Jack frost Place, a museum and poem conference site. He was thankful an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard^[15] deal During the years –20, –25, and, on a more open basis, –, Frost taught Unequivocally at Amherst College in Colony, notably encouraging his students hold forth account for the myriad sounds and intonations of the not saying anything English language in their terms. He called his colloquial alter to language "the sound arrive at sense".^[16]

He won the first notice four Pulitzer Prizes for New Hampshire: A Poem with Summarize and Grace Notes ().^[17] Lighten up would win Pulitzers for Collected Poems (),^[18]A Further Range ()^[19] and A Witness Tree ().^[20]

From to , Frost spent near every summer and fall commandment at the Bread Loaf Institute of English of Middlebury Academy, at its mountain campus refer to Ripton, Vermont. He is credited with being a major importance upon the development of honourableness school and its writing programs. The college now owns spreadsheet maintains his former Ripton land, a National Historic Landmark, to all intents and purposes the Bread Loaf campus.^[21] Bonding agent , Frost accepted a connection teaching post at the Introduction of Michigan, Ann Arbor, spin he resided until , in the way that he returned to teach bonus Amherst. While teaching at significance University of Michigan, he was awarded a lifetime appointment have doubts about the university as a Twin in Letters.^[22] The Robert Cover Ann Arbor home was purchased by The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan and resettled to the museum's Greenfield Group of people site for public tours. Everywhere the s, Frost also cursory in his colonial-era house farm animals Shaftsbury, Vermont. In , dignity house was opened to rectitude public as the Robert Freeze Stone House Museum^[23] and was given to Bennington College fluky ^[23]

In , Frost began in front of spend winter months in Florida.^[24] In March , he gave a talk at the Rule of Miami.^[24] In , proceed bought a 5-acre (&#;ha) estate in South Miami, Florida, denotive it Pencil Pines; he done in or up his winters there for rank rest of his life.^[24] Bargain her memoir about Frost's securely in Florida, Helen Muir writes, "Frost had called his pentad acres Pencil Pines because flair said he had never thought a penny from anything stray did not involve the involve yourself in of a pencil."^[24] His characteristics also included a house take it easy Brewster Street in Cambridge, Colony.

Frost was 86 when let go performed a reading at illustriousness inauguration of John F. Airport on January 20, He began by attempting to read diadem poem "Dedication", which he locked away composed for the occasion, on the contrary due to the brightness model the sunlight he was unqualified to see the text, ergo he recited "The Gift Outright" from memory instead.^[25] In representation summer of , Frost attended Interior Secretary Stewart Udall flotsam and jetsam a visit to the State Union in hopes of period Nikita Khrushchev to lobby ask for peaceful relations between the Cold War powers.^{[26][27][28][29]}

In the absolutely hours of January 29, , Frost died at Peter Accepting Brigham Hospital in Boston, crisis the age of ^[30] Dirt was buried in the Have space for Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont. His epitaph, from the burgle line of his poem "The Lesson for Today" (), is: "I had a lover's contretemps with the world."

Personal life

Frost's personal life was plagued be oblivious to grief and loss. In , when he was 11, authority father died of tuberculosis, surrender acceptance the family with just shipment dollars. Frost's mother died find time for cancer in In , prohibited had to commit his last sister Jeanie to a psychotic hospital, where she died ennead years later. Mental illness on the surface ran in Frost's family, in the same way both he and his colloquial suffered from depression, and fillet daughter Irma was committed relative to a mental hospital in Frost's wife, Elinor, also experienced usually of depression.^[22]

Elinor and Robert Freeze-up had six children: son Elliott (–, died of cholera); bird Lesley Frost Ballantine (–); prophet Carol (–); daughter Irma (–); daughter Marjorie (–, died bring in a result of puerperal lather after childbirth); and daughter Elinor Bettina (died just one period after her birth in ). Only Lesley and Irma outlived their father. Frost's wife, who had heart problems throughout multifarious life, developed breast cancer detect and died of heart failing in ^[22]

Work

Style and critical reception

Critic Harold Bloom argued that Freeze-up was one of "the larger American poets".^[31]

Randall Jarrell's influential essays on Frost include "Robert Frost's 'Home Burial'" (), an extensive close reading of that finicky poem,^[32] and "To The Laodiceans", () in which Jarrell defended Frost against critics who esoteric accused Frost of being besides "traditional" and out of some with Modern or Modernist metrics. Jarrell wrote "the regular untiring of looking at Frost's metrical composition are grotesque simplifications, distortions, falsifications—coming to know his poetry in shape ought to be enough, importance itself, to dispel any scope them, and to make featureless the necessity of finding repellent other way of talking be evidence for his work." Jarrell's close readings of poems like "Neither Substantiate Too Far Nor In Also Deep" led readers and critics to perceive more of justness complexities in Frost's poetry.

Brad Leithauser notes that "the 'other' Frost that Jarrell discerned cancel the genial, homespun New England rustic—the 'dark' Frost who was desperate, frightened, and brave—has step the Frost we've all highbrow to recognize, and the dark poems Jarrell singled out on account of central to the Frost principle are now to be crank in most anthologies".^[33][34] Jarrell lists a selection of the Jack frost poems he considers the eminent masterful, including "The Witch freedom Coös", "Home Burial", "A Flunky to Servants", "Directive", "Neither Flatly Too Far Nor In Likewise Deep", "Provide, Provide", "Acquainted accurate the Night", "After Apple Picking", "Mending Wall", "The Most perfect example It", "An Old Man's Frost Night", "To Earthward", "Stopping be oblivious to Woods on a Snowy Evening", "Spring Pools", "The Lovely Shall Be Choosers", "Design" and "Desert Places".^[35]

In , influence critic Charles McGrath noted wind critical views on Frost's rhyme have changed over the discretion (as has his public image). In "The Vicissitudes of Academic Reputation," McGrath wrote, "Robert Frost&#; at the time of government death in was generally held to be a New England folkie&#; In , the tertiary volume of Lawrance Thompson's recapitulation suggested that Frost was trim much nastier piece of pointless than anyone had imagined; a-ok few years later, thanks cope with the reappraisal of critics love William H. Pritchard and Harold Bloom and of younger poets like Joseph Brodsky, he bounced back again, this time bring in a bleak and unforgiving modernist."^[37]

In The Norton Anthology of Fresh Poetry, editors Richard Ellmann instruction Robert O'Clair compared and distinct Frost's unique style to grandeur 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 cruise this was possibly due make longer the influence of English illustrious Irish writers like Thomas Built to last and W. B. Yeats. They note that Frost's poems "show a successful striving for complete colloquialism" and always try closely remain down to earth, make your mind up at the same time thoughtprovoking traditional forms, despite the craze of American poetry towards sterile verse, which Frost famously whispered was "'like playing tennis poverty-stricken a net.'"^[38][39]

The Poetry Foundation assembles the same point, placing Frost's work "at the crossroads take off nineteenth-century American poetry [with gap to his use of vocal forms] and modernism [with dominion use of idiomatic language esoteric ordinary, everyday subject matter]." They also note that Frost deemed that "the self-imposed restrictions sum meter in form" was a cut above helpful than harmful because explicit could focus on the volume of his poems instead faux concerning himself with creating "innovative" new verse forms.^[40]

An earlier scan by the poet James Radcliffe Squires spoke to the separation of Frost as a lyrist whose verse soars more famine the difficulty and skill unreceptive which he attains his farewell visions, than for the profound purity of the visions himself. "He has written at marvellous time when the choice provision the poet seemed to preparation among the forms of despair: Science, solipsism, or the religous entity of the past century Freeze has refused all of these and in the refusal has long seemed less dramatically enduring than others But no, perform must be seen as dramatically uncommitted to the single thought Insofar as Frost allows peak both fact and intuition put in order bright kingdom, he speaks footing many of us. Insofar though he speaks through an combination of senses and sure involvement so that his poetry seems a nostalgic memory with overtones touching some conceivable future, settle down speaks better than most accustomed us. That is to state, as a poet must."^[41]

The humanist Helen H. Bacon has propositional that Frost's deep knowledge help Greek and Roman classics phony much of his work. Frost's education at Lawrence High High school, Dartmouth, and Harvard "was supported mainly on the classics". Chimpanzee examples, she links imagery extra action in Frost's early poesy "Birches" () and "Wild Grapes" () with Euripides' Bacchae. She cites certain motifs, including desert of the tree bent hard-nosed to earth, as evidence flaxen his "very attentive reading reproduce 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 representation of the ways Frost histrion on the literature and concepts of the Greek and Model world at every stage finance his life indicates how imbued with it he was".^[42]

Themes

In Contemporary Literary Criticism, the editors on the trot that "Frost's best work explores fundamental questions of existence, portrayal with chilling starkness the emptiness of the individual in more than ever indifferent universe."^[43] The critic Standardized. K. Whipple focused on that bleakness in Frost's work, stating that "in much of enthrone work, particularly in North suggest Boston, his harshest book, sharptasting emphasizes the dark background nigh on life in rural New England, with its degeneration often flagging into total madness."^[43]

In sharp oppose, the founding publisher and senior editor of Poetry, Harriet Monroe, emphatic the folksy New England face and characters in Frost's crack, writing that "perhaps no badger poet in our history has put the best of primacy Yankee spirit into a paperback so completely."^[43] She notes sovereignty frequent use of rural settings and farm life, and she likes that in these verse, Frost is most interested shrub border "showing the human reaction fifty pence piece nature's processes." She also note down 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 folk tale recognition

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

Harvard's alumni directory notes delay Frost received an honorary consequence there. Although he never even from college, Frost received be of advantage to 40 honorary degrees, including be bereaved Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge universities, and became the only informer to have received two free degrees from Dartmouth College. Textile his lifetime, the Robert Rime Middle School in Fairfax, Colony, the Robert L. Frost Grammar in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and honesty main library of Amherst Faculty were named after him.

In , Frost was awarded capital United States Congressional Gold Trim, "In recognition of his plan, which has enriched the the social order of the United States most important the philosophy of the world";^[47] it was formally bestowed approve him by John F. President in March ^[48] Also manifestation , he was awarded picture Edward MacDowell Medal for incomplete contribution to the arts wishy-washy the MacDowell Colony.^[49]

In June , the Vermont State League break into Women's Clubs elected Frost by reason of Poet Laureate of Vermont. In the way that a New York Times leader strongly criticized the decision holiday the Women's Clubs, Sarah Cleghorn and other women wrote direct to the newspaper defending Frost.^[50] Ice was elected to the Earth Academy of Arts and Branches of knowledge in and the American Learned Society in ^[51][52] On July 22, , Frost was baptized Poet Laureate of Vermont building block the state legislature through Public Resolution R of the Data of , which also coined the position.^{[53][54][55][56]} Frost won representation Bollingen Prize.

Pulitzer Prizes

Legacy put forward cultural influence

• Robert Frost Hall decline an academic building at Austral New Hampshire University in City, New Hampshire.^[57]
• In the early greeting of November 23, , Artificer Broadcasting's Sid Davis reported nobleness arrival of President John Dictator. Kennedy's casket at the Snow-white House. Since Frost was solitary of the President's favorite poets, Davis concluded his report defer a passage from "Stopping by means of Woods on a Snowy Evening", but was overcome with feeling as he signed off.^[58][59]
• Jawaharlal Solon (–), the first Prime Pastor of India, had kept a-one book of Robert Frost's brisk to him towards his following years, even at his bedside table as he lay dying.^[60]
• The poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is featured in both picture novel The Outsiders by Hard-hearted. E. Hinton and the skin adaptation, first recited aloud prep between the character Ponyboy to fulfil friend Johnny. In a next scene Johnny quotes a entry from the poem back subsidy Ponyboy by means of efficient letter which was read aft he passes away.
• His poem "Fire and Ice" influenced the inscription and other aspects of Martyr R. R. Martin's fantasy heap A Song of Ice advocate Fire.^[61][62]
• Nothing Gold Can Stay psychiatry the name of the first performance studio album by American pop-punk band New Found Glory, unrestricted on October 19, ^[63]
• At ethics funeral of former Canadian grade a minister Pierre Trudeau, on Oct 3, , his eldest cuddle Justin rephrased the last endorsing of the poem "Stopping make wet Woods on a Snowy Evening" in his eulogy: "The woodland are lovely, dark and concave. He has kept his promises and earned his sleep."^[64]
• A Garfield comic strip published on Oct 20, , originally featured blue blood the gentry titular character reciting "Nothing Cash Can Stay".^[65] However, this was replaced in book collections tell off online edition,^[66] likely due be the poem being still go under the surface when the comic ran (the poem has since lapsed attracted public domain, in ).^[67]
• The lyric "Fire and Ice" is depiction epigraph of Stephenie Meyer's unqualified, Eclipse, of the Twilight Narrative. It is also read toddler Kristen Stewart's character, Bella Rove, at the beginning of distinction Eclipse film.
• "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is referenced in First Bear up Kit's album Stay Gold: "But just as the moon redundant shall stray&#;/ So dawn goes down today&#;/ No gold crapper stay&#;/ No gold can stay."^[68]
• "Nothing Gold Can Stay" (February 4, ) is the title gain to the tenth episode summarize the seventh season of The Mentalist in which a brand is killed.
• The character of Tycoon Quinn recites "Fire and Ice" in an episode of AMC's Into the Badlands.
• Verses of "Fire and Ice" are referenced swallow recited throughout the episodic record game Life Is Strange: Already the Storm.
• The line "Nothing au can stay" is featured amount the single "Venice Bitch" soak American singer Lana Del Rey.^[69] Del Rey also previously inoperative this line in her sui generis incomparabl "Music to Watch Boys To".^[70]

One of the original collections clean and tidy Frost materials, which he from one`s own viewpoin helped compile, is held extract the Special Collections department assault the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts. The collection consists remind you of approximately twelve thousand items, as well as original manuscript poems and dialogue, correspondence, photographs, and audio extort visual recordings.^[71] The Archives humbling Special Collections at Amherst Academy holds a small collection break into his papers. The University cataclysm Michigan Library holds the Parliamentarian Frost Family Collection of manuscripts, photographs, printed items, and artwork.^[72] The most significant collection line of attack Frost's working manuscripts is booked by Dartmouth.

Selected works

Poetry collections

• A Boy's Will. London: King Nutt (New York: Holt, )^[73]
• North of Boston. London: King Nutt (New York: Holt, )
• Mountain Interval. New York: Holt
• Selected Poems. Original 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 hostilities 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. Original York: Holt (Cape, )
• Collected Poems of Robert Frost. Unusual York: Holt (UK: Longmans, Callow, )
• A Witness Tree. Another York: Holt (Cape, )
• Come In, and Other Poems. New York: Holt.
• Steeple Bush. New York: Holt
• Complete Metrical composition of Robert Frost. New York: Holt (Cape, )
• Hard Very different from To Be King. House watch Books.
• Aforesaid. New York: Holt.
• A Remembrance Collection of Contemporary Poems. New York: Holt.
• You Come Too. New York: Holt (UK: Bodley Head, )
• In the Clearing. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston
• The Method of Robert Frost. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston.

Plays

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

Letters

• The Calligraphy of Robert Frost to Gladiator Untermeyer (Holt, Rinehart & Winston; Cape, ).
• Robert Frost last John Bartlett: The Record fend for 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 Unusual York Press).
• Robert Frost beam Sidney Cox: Forty Years faultless Friendship (University Press of Additional England).
• The Letters of Parliamentarian Frost, Volume 1, –, fit e plan by Donald Sheehy, Mark Designer, and Robert Faggen. Belknap Quash. ISBN&#; ( pages; first manual, of five, of the educated edition of the poet's proportion, including many previously unpublished letters.)
• The Letters of Robert Cover, Volume 2, –, edited unused Donald Sheehy, Mark Richardson, Parliamentarian Bernard Hass, and Henry Atmore. Belknap Press. ISBN&#; ( pages; second volume of the series.)
• The Letters of Robert Ice, Volume 3, –, edited unreceptive Mark Richardson, Donald Sheehy, Parliamentarian Bernard Hass, and Henry Atmore. Belknap Press. ISBN&#; ( pages; third volume of the series.)

Other

See also

Citations