Robert Frost provides an excellent example of a poet who experienced a long career, going from strength to strength. Accessible and down-to-earth, his work still continues to be popular today. Most readers can relate to his work as he focusses so accurately on human experience; his themes have not aged over the years and show no sign of aging in the future. Frost was an American poet who was respected for his portrayals of country life in New England, his grasp of conversational language, and his accurate poetry depicting commonplace people in ordinary positions.
Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, California (Biography). His father, named William, was a journalist and an enthusiastic Democrat. He passed away from tuberculosis when Frost was around the age of eleven (Biography). Frost’s mother, Isabelle Moody, was from Scotland and, after the death of her husband, restarted her occupation as a teacher in order to provide for her children (Famous).
In 1892 Frost progressed from school to Darthmouth College for several months. For the ten years that followed, he worked in a series of different jobs, including working in a textile mill. In 1894 Frost had his first experience of publication when the New York Independent took on “My Butterfly.” From this point onwards, Frost had an increasing number of poems published in magazines. In 1895 he married Elinor White, with whom he had six children (Famous).
In England, Frost was regularly discussed by individuals who monitored the progression of contemporary poetry, and quickly American tourists were going back to the States with talk of the unfamiliar poet who was producing a commotion in London. Boston poet, Amy Lowell, voyaged to England in 1914, and there she first experienced the work of Robert Frost. She promptly took his collections back with her to the States and started a fight to find an American publisher to take the work on. She also started working on her own praising evaluation of North of Boston (Biography). While living in England, Frost was intensely inspired by English poets, Rupert Brooke being one of his most prominent influences (famous).
Without his full knowledge, Frost was becoming famous. The start of World War I caused him to move his family back to America in 1915. By this time, Lowell's review had been published in The New Republic. This resulted in many literary professionals all over the Northeast becoming conscious that there was a writer of rare talents circulating. In 1914, The American publisher, Henry Holt, published its copy of North of Boston. It turn into a big hit and Holt soon also published A Boy's Will. Rapidly, Frost was inundated with offers from publications who wished to publish his work (Biography).
Between 1916 and 1938, Frost taught at Amherst College and at universities in Michigan. In 1916 he published Mountain Interval, his third poetry collection. This book encompassed poems such as “The Road Not Taken,” and “The Hill Wife” (famous).
“The Road Not Taken” is a good example of Frost’s work at this time. The theme of the poem is that decisions in life lead to further options, and that human life is too short-lived for anyone to be able to live out every path available to them.
Mountain Interval demonstrated Frost's vast interest in nature and receptivity concerning the ambitions of people. He was fond of imagery in his writing, and his images tended to be mundane. Examples include stars, brooks and houses. Partly due to his use of everyday experiences and images, readers were able to relate to Frost and to his works. His poems were accessible and appealed to a wide audience (famous). Frost frequently made use of rhythms and language found in everyday conversations and, at times. This conversational style is, perhaps, another reason for his wide appeal.
In 1920 Frost bought a farm in Vermont. This was close to Middlebury College in which he co-created the Bread Loaf School and Conference of English. 1938 was a bad year for Frost, personally. In this year, his wife passed away and he was separated from four of his six children. Two daughters had psychological breakdowns, and his son committed suicide. Following his wife’s passing, Frost became obsessed with his secretary, Kay Morrison and wrote “A Witness Tree,” a love poem which has become one of his most famous (famous).
Frost travelled a great deal throughout the course of his life. As well as his moves to and from England, there were numerous other trips. In 1957, Frost went to England with Lawrance Thompson and then, in 1961, they also travelled to Israel and Greece. In the same year, frost also took part in the induction of President Kennedy by reading aloud two poems. The following year, 1962, Frost went to the Soviet Union as part of a goodwill organisation. While there, he conversed at length with Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Afterwards, Frost termed the man “no fathead” and “not a coward” (famous). Furthermore Frost conveyed that Khrushchev had claimed America was “too liberal to fight.” This produced a substantial disturbance in Washington (famous).
As one might expect, Frost received many awards throughout his lifetime. Among these were tributes from the American Academy of Poets in 1953, New York University in 1956, and the MacDowell Medal in 1962. In 1949, Amherst College named Frost as Saimpson Lecturer for Life (famous). These are just a few of the many rewards with which he was credited.
Frost died on 29th January, 1963. At this time, he was thought of as an off-the-record poet laureate of America. He was recorded as saying once, “I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world” (famous). In his poetry Frost described the countryside with which he immersed himself, noting the minutiae of country existence, which conceal common implication. His autonomous, subtle, half amusing opinion of the world resulted in comments such as “I never take my side in a quarrel,” and “I'm never serious except when I'm fooling” (famous). While Frost's poems were usually admired, the absence of sincerity about social and political troubles of the nineteen thirties irritated some socially positioned individuals. Biographers, in more recent years, have made a multifaceted and conflicting portrayal of Frost. In Lawrance Thompson's serious, authorised biography, the poet was portrayed as a pessimist, anti-intellectual, unkind, and cross man. However, in Jay Parini's 1999 piece, Frost was seen with compassion once more: '”He was a loner who liked company; a poet of isolation who sought a mass audience; a rebel who sought to fit in. Although a family man to the core, he frequently felt alienated from his wife and children and withdrew into reveries. While preferring to stay at home, he travelled more than any poet of his generation to give lectures and readings, even though he remained terrified of public speaking to the end” (famous).
In her review, Lowell referred to North of Boston as a “sad” book, mentioning its portrayals of inbred, secluded, and mentally distressed people from New England. These off-mainstream depictions indicated Frost's parting from the timeworn tradition and his new attentiveness in defining New England individuals and their influential background. Amid such psychological inquiries are the estranged existence of Silas in “The Death of the Hired Man,” and Amy’s incapability in “Home Burial” to negotiate the tricky path from grief to ordinariness (biography).
For Frost, nature had two opposing sides. Promptly in his career, he inverted the Emersonian idea of nature as healer and mentor in a poem in A Boy's Will entitled “Storm Fear,” an uninviting depiction of a snowstorm as a powerful creature that challenges the people of a remote house to venture outside to their deaths. In later works such as “The Hill Wife” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” the benevolent appearance of nature masks latent threats, and death loiters behind shadowy, secretive trees. Nature's playful characteristic prevails in poems like “Birches,” where a harsh blizzard is remembered as an occurrences of unforgettable splendour. Though Frost is recognized by many as a fundamentally cheerful poet, the sad features in life carried on influencing his works, from “Out, Out—'” in which a boy’s hand is detached, to a popular poem called “The Fear of Man,” in which people’s relief from permeating terror is enclosed in the image of a gasping rush through the darkened city from the safety of one dim street light to another (biography).
Frost established a positive flexibility of theme, but he usually examined human interactions with nature in minor meetings which work as metaphors for bigger features of the human situation. He frequently depicted the human aptitude to convert the smallest event or natural aspect to emotional return, viewed at its most efficient shape in “Dust of Snow”: “The way a crow / Shook down on me / The dust of snow / From a hemlock tree / Has given my heart / A change of mood / And saved some part / Of a day I had rued” (Frost).
Robert Frost was, undoubtedly, one of the most influential poets who has ever lived. His personal life saw a series of highs and extreme lows, and his work reflects such fluctuations. Published both in England and in America, he achieved fame suddenly and without much warning. Throughout his life, he produced a great deal of poetry which has gone on to be important in the literary world. Known for his depictions of everyday people in everyday situations, Frost’s are poems which most people can relate to in some way. Furthermore, his knack for the portrayal of colloquial American dialogue sets him apart from many of his more traditional contemporaries. Frost had a long career when alive, but his work is still popular even today. The subjects he characteristically wrote about, namely the natural world and the everyday world, are ones that have not aged. Themes involving human experience and emotion are relevant to everyone, regardless of their generation. It is almost certain that Frost’s work will continue to be enjoyed for many years to come.
Works Cited
Biography. “Robert Frost Biography.” 2011. Web. 20 April 2012.
http://www.biography.com/people/robert-frost-9303322?page=1
Famous Poets and Poems. “Robert Frost Biography.” 2012. Web. 20 April 2012.
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/robert_frost/biography
Frost, R. “Dust of Snow.” Poem Hunter. 2003. Web. 20 April 2012.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dust-of-snow/
Frost, R. “The Road Not Taken.” Poem Hunter. 2003. Web. 20 April 2012.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-road-not-taken/
