Robert Frost on Writing

by Robert Frost

Book by Frost, Robert

Genres: Poetry, Writing

188 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1973

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

[Randy Corn]

Excellent read. I have always enjoyed the voice in Frost's poems and I found the voice in his letters, lectures, and reviews as engaging. The ideas were not simple, but encountering the same concepts over and again through the reading helped me to understand. I expect I will return to read this book over and again many times.

[Steven Withrow]

Can't even begin to say how revelatory and enlightening this book has been. I'm going to order a copy from a dealer (a crime it's out of print) and read it once a year.

[L.B. Holding]

An uninspiring look at Frost's critical takes on poetry, via essays, letters, and lectures. Turns out my old favorite was a grumpy curmudgeon who held all kinds of resentments against many if not most of his contemporaries and spent a good deal of time spouting off to those he didn't hate about those he did. I watched him fall off my pedestal page after page.

Frost's opinions of poetic meter and internal dialogue were fascinating, though, and I did take several notes.

...and of course I still love his poems.

[Paola]

il libro che contiene la famosa affermazione dell'intraducibilità della poesia