Selected Poems

by Robert Frost

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Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction, Literature, School, American, 20th Century

224 pages, Hardcover

First published November 13, 1936

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

[salva]

There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not left fall.

Frost’s poetry has been steadily refined with age. Though his earlier poems—and even some in A Boy’s Will—present a boring, even mindless formalism, he has been able to harness an elegant poetic voice in vernacular language that has discreet beauty and philosophical simplicity.
Poems from North of Boston or Mountain Interval showcase the poet at his best: every line is praise for the simple things in life and a capturing of their beauty. Various poems, some written like short stories in blank verse, show the poet’s imagination and constant sense of awe towards anything human. This view, so simply yet carefully expressed, is enough to reconsider the sublime of daily life.

[Bethany]

Ah, Robert Frost: the man who convinced me that I hated poetry.
Years ago, I was assigned to read some of his poetry for school and, let's just say, I read them as if I was taking cough-syrup. (Note: Why, yes! I hate cough-syrup. I'll never forget the fateful night where I spit a mouthful of it across the bathroom. Good times...) Anyhow, so I didn't enjoy his poems because I was reading them with the wrong attitude &c. If Carl Sandburg hadn't come along later and shown me what a wonderful thing poetry can be, I don't know where I'd be today!

So, while rummaging around the attic the other month, I came across this hated volume of poetry and decided to give ol' Robert another try. Guess what? I didn't hate him! He'll never be my favourite poet, but I don't hate him. (I didn't really care for the selections from North of Boston, but the other ones were good! The poem "Birches" was my favourite, I think.)

[Trang Xu]

My travel companion.

[Zander Bautz]

Thanks Bobby

[Theresa Timlin]

I always mean to read more poetry and I found this slim volume on my bookshelf-apparently a gift to my late husband from a work colleague. We all know Frost and how evocative his poems are of rural New England. But I wasn’t expecting his long narrative conversational poems where husband and wife go back and forth telling a story; they were my favorites.

[Isabel Bridgeland]

3.5

[Josh Bauder]

Of special note:

Into My Own
To the Thawing Wind
A Prayer in Spring
The Vantage Point
Going for Water
In Hardwood Groves
Mending Wall
The Black Cottage
The Death of the Hired Man
The Wood-Pile
Good Hours
The Road Not Taken (of course)
Birches
Range Finding
The Bonfire
The Last Word of a Bluebird
The Sound of the Trees

[Bookish Dervish]

Absolutely fascinating!
I've been immersed in classical Arabic poetry developing a taste for certain criteria that does NOT apply to most European poems. But with Robert Frost, I experienced style fused with excellent word selection in addition to the ideas conveyed.
This painting would, to my thinking, say much of what I might not be able to convey.

The Road not Taken by Sonia Lera Preston

[Missey Wilhelm]

A time to talk.
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And a shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

What's not to love about a poem or this poet?

[Washington Vieira]

"A whole generation influenced and moved by a "Boy's will".
He has a true juvenile dialogue with his readers.On Greece he shows a remarkable knowledge of History;but my favorite is "The road not taken "a philosophical poetry about the choices we made in our lives".

[Gracebbcs]

his poems are very down-to-earth yet very profound at the same time.
I like his sense of humor and wisdom.

[Brittany]

I like The Road Not Taken but honestly most of his other poems were difficult to get through. Not for me.

[C. Drying]

WHY DID YOU READ THIS BOOK?
It's been a while since I read a book of poetry, and this one was at the top of my TBR pile.

WHAT DID YOU LIKE ABOUT THIS BOOK?
Though the first few poems didn't grab me, I ended up mostly appreciating the poetry of Robert Frost. I especially liked the poems that were long and short-story like. They featured vignettes of individuals living in rural America back in the early-to-mid 20th century.

Frost's economy of detail puts the reader to work at filling in images while conversation between and among characters delivers profound emotion. Despite the economy of detail, these poems are long and take their time.

Frost has a gentle touch; his poems don't drain your brain with symbols, alliterations, and other literary devices, which for other works I quite love of course, but these poems calmly give the reader a glimpse at deeply emotional situations, some of which are sad and shocking but not overbearingly intrusive, an effect that appeals to the more stoical side of me. Though I did feel the urge to shed a tear at times.

WHAT DID YOU DISLIKE ABOUT THIS BOOK?
Some of the earlier pieces in the beginning of the book didn't grab me, probably because the allusions went over my head since he wrote in an era that's long since gone for the most part.

DO YOU RECOMMEND THIS BOOK?
Oh, yes, I feel fulfilled at the feelings Frost was able to evoke in me and am certain others will experience the same.

[George]

This completion of poems is an excellent read because it tells intriguing and exciting stories in the distinctive and concise writing of Robert Frost. After reading and understanding the past of Frost, it is interesting to see his connection with nature and how he describes the places he goes. In the first couple of pages, Frost describes everyday life stories. He uses comedy as a way to criticize certain aspects of life. In the poem, The Self-Seeker, He talks about the cost of a lawyer and how he is selling his soul just to be represented in court. Most of the poems in the book did not follow a traditional rhythmic pattern which I enjoyed. He wasn't limited to certain word choices and it was easy to follow. The themes of the poem all seemed to be based around Frost's curiosity as many of my favorite poems are about him traveling into the unknown. I recommend this book to people who want to know more about Frost.

[Nadir Obeid]

Frost’s poetry transported me into a cottage settled deep within the forest. Living a generally quaint life, time passes you by, occasionally being met with life’s hardships and heartbreaks.

Overall a really good book. My favourite -
“Lovers, forget your love,
And list to the love of these,
She a window flower,
And he a winter breeze.

When the frosty window veil
Was melted down at noon,
And the cagèd yellow bird
Hung over her in tune,

He marked her through the pane,
He could not help but mark,
And only passed her by,
To come again at dark.

He was a winter wind,
Concerned with ice and snow,
Dead weeds and unmated birds,
And little of love could know.

But he sighed upon the sill,
He gave the sash a shake,
As witness all within
Who lay that night awake.

Perchance he half prevailed
To win her for the flight
From the firelit looking-glass
And warm stove-window light.

But the flower leaned aside
And thought of naught to say,
And morning found the breeze
A hundred miles away.”

[Dana]

This book worked well as a good second step in familiarizing myself with Frost’s poetry, having studied his most famous poems back in high school and in an introductory college English course. There was a decent variety, and the vast majority I’d never read — although, for a book of “selected poems,” I was really missing some of the ones I did know, such as “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and “Fire and Ice.” I enjoyed nearly all of the poems in this collection, even the ones I knew nothing about, but I’d have to say that I generally liked Frost’s longer, dialogue-based poems a bit less. My favorites were the nature poems. Overall, I found this to be a very calming read.

[Marybeth]

In the course of my reading life, I have not taken the time to read much poetry. This collection of Robert Frost's poems was at my house, so I decided to read it. I have mixed feelings about this reading experience, because on one hand Frost painted beautiful pictures with few words. However, I feel like I did not fully grasp the meaning of some of the poems.

I want to try reading the poetry of Emily Dickinson and E.E. Cummings, so I will be giving poetry reading another try!

Final rating: 2.5

[Lisa]

I took the time during a wind storm to sit and read Robert Frost's collection of poems as the wind howled. Frost often writes about nature and the world around him. In his last years, he lived in the quiet woods of Vermont. I am particularly fond of "Reluctance" as he describes the end of the fall season, the end of love and the reluctance to accept the end of seasons and the end of love. Vermont has long cold winters. I feel the same as we begin the long winters in Buffalo. Perfectly worded, reluctance. Once I started, I devoured this book.

[Jack]

The Project Gutenburg selection from 1923, I imagine this misses a lot of Frost's best work, but The Road Not Taken is here, and After Apple-Picking, and a really bizarre narrative poem called A Hundred Collars, which I think is some kind of Whitman homosexual thing, though I haven't read much Whitman. I'm still kind of a novice in poetry and find it difficult to judge, or even more importantly, to enjoy, and I don't think Frost will ever be a favourite, but there's 40 years of poetry missing from this collection and I presume I am missing something.

[John Majors]

I fell in love with Frost's poetry as a kid. Re-visiting his work in this volume didn't disappoint. It was perfect for nibbling on in the evenings. Nothing quite like poetry to calm the soul. I was surprised that my favorite poems were not the 'rhyme' type - but the long form (5-10 pages) that told a story. There were probably a dozen or so of these sprinkled throughout this collection, and each of them drew me in and kept me rapt from the first line.

[Fredrick Drake]

Robert Frost is already one of the most celebrated poets in the country so there isn't much I can add to what has already been said. He weaves together wonderful phrases that capture the beauty of nature and man's place in nature. A few of his poems touch on the tragedies of war and maturing. This collection seems to capture a bit of the different focuses Frost had along his career which makes it great for someone being introduced to his poetry.

[M]

I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't quite what is in this book, and thats a good thing. I really enjoyed the everyday life story poems. It is a fascinating insight into how things were at a different time. I guess I thought it would be mostly poems like the Road not Taken, but am happy it was different.

[Nicole Luo]

Frost's shorter poems about nature are very pretty and do evoke a certain kind of whimsicality, but I could not follow the storylines in his longer poems for the life of me. I think if I had read more poetry prior to this and had a better understanding of various rhyme schemes and cadences and whatnot, I would have enjoyed this more

[Yesenia]

i have finished very few poetry books in my life. i don't really like poetry enough, i guess.
but Robert Frost... is like a whisper. He loves words and he loves nature and he can take the latter and express it in the former.

i loved this book.

[Lizzy]

I absolutely loved this. Robert Frost's poetry is easy to understand, yet also beautiful and elegant. He explains simple things in a way that makes us see them differently, and his description of common aesthetics is so beautiful to read.

[Glady]

Robert Frost's poetry has always been a favorite of mine. This collection includes his most famous works like "Mending Wall," "Out, Out,"and "The Road Not Taken." Filled with stoic, independent New Englanders, these poems praise the contentment that comes from hard work and the quiet acceptance that is forged from loss. Many of these poems will be familiar to American youths, but their truthfulness is far more evident to those who have more life experience.

[Evelyn]

I just recently started really getting into poetry and I absolutely loooooove all of Robert Frost's works that I've gotten a chance to read

[Karen]

Listening to audio of Frost reading some of his poems, there's no denying how thoughtful and genuine he was, seemingly capturing exact moments in his life like a realist painter.

[Tiffany Manning]

Good collection.

[Isaac]

8