Versed in Country Things

by Robert Frost, B.A. King (Photographer), Edward Connery Lathem (Editor)

Twenty of Frost's best poems have been chosen for this special book. Favorites such as "After Apple-Picking," "Birches," and "In Time of Cloud Burst" - mixed with poems not yet fully appreciated for their force and beauty - are complemented by B. A. King's eloquent and spare black-and-white images. These photographs evoke Frost's New England with their stone walls, stark farmhouses, snowy woods, and the simple poetry of a windswept tree.

Genres: Poetry, Photography, Classics, Nonfiction, Nature

65 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1996

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

[Roger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I originally wanted to write my review of Robert Frosts’s Versed in Country Things as a poem but alas I just don’t have it in me anymore. I attempted to use each entry here as a prompt for reflection and meditation, listening to the poet’s spare voice and worrying it for meaning like the beads on a rosary. But the world has a way of making it’s presence known, doesn’t it? The photos included in this volume do add to the experience. Beautiful little book.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book grants the reader some moments of quiet, simple reflection. The poems, accompanied as they are by black and white photos, sing of farming as it was some decades ago. It is New England in picture and word, but it could have represented rural Midwest or several other regions just as easily.

It is good to step into quiet where the farm tools are still and only birds and insects produce the hum of life going on.

[Amanda up North · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first book of poetry I purchased to own as a young adult. I was very into black and white photography at the time, and the photography in this book probably had a lot to do with it. But I enjoy the classic collection of Robert Frost's poems, too.
It still has a place on my personal bookshelf, twenty-some years later.

[Jerry Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

a true American beauty,

this Boston author has made more fans of America than all of politics in the last in 3 years.

[Edmund Davis-Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice little book. I think I like BA King's photos more than Robert Frost's poems.

[Sonia Crites · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful nature based poetry and black and white photos. I love the poetry of Robert Frost for its simplicity and focus on nature.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Frost is the perfect poet to read on a snowy Sunday. This collection is especially perfect as the snow falls, views of the mountains, and hearing the spring birds chirp.

This is a small collection mixed with photography so you can easily read it in an hour or a day or as the mood strikes.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nice pictures! I guess I’m not really a poetry guy, I read it because my mom had the book, but I don’t like how you have to read it three times to figure out the meaning. The images that he’s trying to formulate in your mind often times to me end up being pointless.

[Jojo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't usually read poetry, I picked up this book to complete a reading challenge. I do enjoy Robert Frost's work and this book had some beautiful poems in it.

[Carole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of Robert Frost ' s less well-known poems along with photographs of country life.

[Frances Sprei · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful combination of poetry and images, even if I must admit that e poems are not always my type. But there are definitely some gems

[Benjamin]

Pleasantly lost mostly in the photographs, augmented by Frost's words. It's usually the other way around.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

The photographs are a wonderful accompaniment to these poems which speak to the heart of anyone raised in the country, especially one who loves the outdoors or has done some farming.

[Bilal Saleem · Rating 3 out of 5]

He loves nature and is afraid of progress of humans which lead to decline in nature and its resources. His poems are nice but tbh I loved the photograph way more they are soo good!

[Elisabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

None of these poems were favorites. The poems selected didn't all even fit the theme.

[ZaRi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The house had gone to bring again
To the midnight sky a sunset glow.
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go.

The barn opposed across the way,
That would have joined the house in flame
Had it been the will of the wind, was left
To bear forsaken the place's name.

No more it opened with all one end
For teams that came by the stony road
To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs
And brush the mow with the summer load.

The birds that came to it through the air
At broken windows flew out and in,
Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh
From too much dwelling on what has been.

Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf,
And the aged elm, though touched with fire;
And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm;
And the fence post carried a strand of wire.

For them there was really nothing sad.
But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,
One had to be versed in country things
Not to believe the phoebes wept.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I became interested in poetry since I read Alfred Joyce Kilmer's poem: The House With Nobody In It. Versed In Country Things combine a collection of Robert Frost poems about the joy, simplicity, loneliness, dangers, and hardships of the farming/rural community accompanied with the stark, black & white photography of B. A. King.

This is more of a coffee table/conversation book to be periodically picked up and read piecemeal for quiet reflection than completely digested in one setting. An excellent book in all with the photographs serving as visual backdrops to Robert Frost's poetic prose.

[Paula Dembeck · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved the idea of this book but had some problems with it.

It is a selection of poems by Frost complemented by photographs taken by B.A. King. The photographs are all in black and white which was great for some, but I believe others would have been much better in colour.

The poems were all about the country as the title states, but I found those with rhyme somewhat overdone and theatrical.

I really liked a couple of the poems but that was all.

[Ginny · Rating 4 out of 5]

After days of playing Candy Crush and seeing colored pieces in my sleep, I could relate to the poem about apple picking, and the feeling, "I'm done with apple picking now.
Black and white photos of country scenes and 20 poems by Robert Frost. I liked The Need of Being Versed in Country Things, Good-by and Keep Cold, and Birches.

[Bonnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked some of Frost's poems, but not all of them and I didn't really care for the pictures in the book either. They seemed somewhat distracting to me.

[Brownshoebrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The photographs coupled with Frost's poems make for a great book. The two mediums really complement each other.

[CFAITC]

Twenty of Frost's poems are complemented with black and white images of New England stone walls, farmhouses, and snowy woods.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful black and white photographs complement selected poems of Robert Frost. Is there a better poem than Directive?