The Letters Of Robert Frost To Louis Untermeyer

by Robert Frost, Louis Untermeyer

extremely rare,very good condition

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Flinty, moody, plainspoken and deep, Robert Frost was one of America's most popular 20th-century poets. Frost was farming in Derry, New Hampshire when, at the age of 38, he sold the farm, uprooted his family and moved to England, where he devoted himself to his poetry. His first two books of verse, A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914), were immediate successes. In 1915 he returned to the United States and continued to write while living in New Hampshire and then Vermont. His pastoral images of apple trees and stone fences -- along with his solitary, man-of-few-words poetic voice -- helped define the modern image of rural New England. Frost's poems include "Mending Wall" ("Good fences make good neighbors"), "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" ("Whose woods these are I think I know"), and perhaps his most famous work, "The Road Not Taken" ("Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- / I took the one less traveled by"). Frost was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times: in 1924, 1931, 1937 and 1943. He also served as "Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress" from 1958-59; that position was renamed as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry (or simply Poet Laureate) in 1986.

Frost recited his poem "The Gift Outright" at the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy... Frost attended both Dartmouth College and Harvard, but did not graduate from either school... Frost preferred traditional rhyme and meter in poetry; his famous dismissal of free verse was, "I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down."

Reviews

[Kayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

These letters, written by Robert Frost to his good friend the poet and critic Louis Untermeyer, are clearly curated. However, enough of Frost’s idiosyncratic world view and prickly self comes through to leave the reader feeling like she got a glimpse into a private world. My favorite Frost poems are his darker ones and these letters remind me of the personal tragedy he experienced and then plowed back into his art. This book is also a testament to a lifelong friendship that survived war, divorces, death, and competition. They truly loved each other.

[Sherry Chandler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've about come to the conclusion that collections of letters make fascinating reading matter only for a select few.

I am not among the select.

I base this on a statistically laughable set of two examples: Frost and Virginia Woolf.

Some gems in this collection but quite a bit of arcane stuff to read through to mine them out.

Though it's not as bad as having to pick-axe your way through all of Virginia Woolf's letters to her sister about the servant problem.

My advice: read the poems.

[e l l i e · Rating 5 out of 5]

A college professor gave me this book because she knew how much I loved Robert Frosts dualism. I lost it in 2021. I think about it daily via intrusive thoughts on how I lost the most precious thing to ever own. if you havent read, you should.

[Anne, Unfinished Woman]

First Edition, 1963, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, cloth
Black Sun, 4/23/16, 7.00 (6.00), Very Good: some tears to dc