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Robert Frost: Main Page | an Impressive Frost Poetry Sampler | Thought Provoking Quotes by Robert Frost | Robert Frost, a Singer of Sweet Nostalgia | Rural Imagery, Metaphysical Significance -- Robert Frost | Frost Sold the Farm, Moved to England | Frost's Writing, Teaching, and Lecturing | Lyrics of Unforgettable Beauty -- Robert Frost | Books by Robert Frost and Reviews | Katharena's Essential Robert Frost, One-on-One! | "OMG, it's Robert Frost" on FaceBook!

Robert Frost : A Life

Robert Frost, the farmer-poet of New England, actually spent his formative early years in San Francisco. His mother moved the family east after the death of her husband--a hard-living journalist from whom Robert took his willful perversity. He attended Dartmouth and Harvard, leaving both prematurely, and after putative stabs at teaching and journalism became a poultry farmer in New Hampshire. It took a trip to England in 1912 (to live "under thatch") for his poetry finally to be published, and when he returned to America in 1915 his reputation had preceded him. Until his death in 1963, he worked assiduously at consolidating his position as America's premier voice; reading at Kennedy's inauguration and meeting Khrushchev were just two of the scenes he stole. So why does Jay Parini need to reclaim him?

The answer lies with Lawrance Thompson. Thompson was one of Frost's most earnest disciples, and for years the poet, ever eager to shape his own image, allowed him a Boswellian intimacy. Unfortunately, Thompson came to despise his former mentor, and his exhaustively documented volumes portray Frost as a kind of solipsistic monster, in marked contrast to the awe with which he had previously been described. Parini, also a biographer of John Steinbeck, in a wave of perspective seeks a corrective to Thompson's bile. His writing is intelligent yet breathlessly generous, and he is at his best when considering the poems themselves. He rightly ascribes to Frost the innovation of the colloquial voice in serious verse--a legacy that appears immense today when so much contemporary poetry consists of little else. Frost's mastery lay in the freedom he found within conformity and the dark corners he discovered by probing, which contribute to a melancholic spirituality beyond the rusticity for which he is popularly celebrated. While Thompson's egg is cracked and dry, Parini prefers a softer boil, and his elegantly reverential tone is imbued with a perception that reminds readers how great a poet Frost remains. The clergyman who advised him at an early age that his verse was "too close to speech," and thus gave him his voice, deserves eternal gratitude.

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...[a] sturdy and well-informed ... biography... --The New York Times Book Review, Christopher Benfey

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Parini, a poet (House of Days, 1998), biographer (John Steinbeck, 1995), and novelist (Benjamins Crossing, 1998), delivers a sensitive life of Frost that highlights the poets struggle to find light and stability in an existence filled with darkness and chaos. In old age, Frost was as full of honors as of years, a literary lion who received four Pulitzers and innumerable honorary degrees and recited his poetry at John Kennedys inauguration. The triumph was all the more striking in that Frost had battled against modernist tendencies in poetry, collectivist tendencies in politics, and his own fears of madness. Parini does not depart radically from the contours of Frosts life outlined in Laurence Thompsons groundbreaking, Pulitzer Prizewinning work, including discussions of his alcoholic father, years of uncertainty as a farmer, the poetic breakthrough he achieved in his two years in England, and his sorrow and self-reproach over the death of his wife. But he offers a corrective to Thompsons underlying animus toward his subject (a dislike probably exacerbated by the competition of Frost and Thompson for the poets secretary, Kay Morrison). He shows that Frost was frequently afflicted by depression (as were his father, sister, and two children who committed suicide), but that he remained a caring if difficult husband and father, a charming if cantankerous friend, and a lively if unconventional teacher. Parini sees each poem as a victory over depression, anxiety, fear, and sloth. He is particularly good at tracing how Frost was influenced by Emerson, William James, Swedenborg, and Yeats; in demonstrating Frosts achievement in writing poetry that would adhere to the bones of human speech; and in arguing that his seemingly simple verse masked a classical education that rivaled that of Eliot and Pound. For the 125th anniversary of the poets birth, here is neither hagiography nor pathography. Parinis life magnificently details how Frost, through fortitude and lifelong dedication to craft, sought to heed his own advice to be whole again beyond confusion. --From Kirkus Reviews