Meet Mr. Frost

Robert Frost, ~1913

The English poet, novelist, and translator Robert Graves has said that "Robert Frost was the first American who could be honestly reckoned a master-poet by world standards" (Frost).  Irony abounds in this statement, for, though he would become a household name in his own lifetime, Frost found no success as a poet until he left his native America for England, and despite his success found little favor with his American contemporaries who found Frost's classical, pastoral works to be backwards-facing compared to their free-form and political writings (Baym 776).

The Frost family

Frost was born in San Francisco, but when his father died (Frost aged 11) his mother moved the family back East to the family's traditional Massachusetts home.  It was the rural scenes of his adolescence that would become Frost's medium for the duration of his career.  Frost was first published by his high school's magazine, and though he pursued several professions after a two-month stint at Dartmouth, he always felt that his calling was poetry ("Robert Frost").  After working as a teacher and dairy farmer, among other things, Frost moved his family to England in 1912.  He continued to work on his poetry, and in 1914 his first book of poems, A Boy's Will, was published.  Ezra Pound took an interest in his work, and upon his recommendation, Frost's second book, North of Boston, was published in America.  At last vindicated--or redeemed--Frost returned to America upon his new-found success, buying a farm in Derry, New Hampshire (Baym 775).

Frost at his Derry, New Hampshire farm.

Frost's work is artfully deceptive.  It is tempting to read his poems as simple descriptions of pretty things in nature, or interesting narratives of country folk, but his work contains what Frost called "ulteriority"--layered beneath every line are ulterior meanings to be found by the contemplative reader.  This is the delight of reading Frost: No bashing over the reader's head with blunt language, rather, depth in beauty to be found when looked for, pleasantly.

Frost at Kennedy's inauguration

Robert Frost died in 1963 aged 89, thus eulogized by President Kennedy: "His death impoverishes us all; but he has bequeathed this nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding" (Frost).