When winter comes to New England, it is easy to bring to mind the name of Robert Frost. There is no more iconic winter New England poem that the one that begins,

Whose woods these are, I think I know.

And one of my favorite spots in Vermont is the Frost gravesite in the cemetery of the First Church in Old Bennington -just down the street from the Bennington Monument.

Apples, birches, hayfields and stone walls; simple features like these make up the landscape of four-time Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Frost’s poetry. Known as a poet of New England, Frost (1874-1963) spent much of his life working and wandering the woods and farmland of Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire. As a young man, he dropped out of Dartmouth and then Harvard, then drifted from job to job: teacher, newspaper editor, cobbler. His poetry career took off during a three-year trip to England with his wife Elinor where Ezra Pound aided the young poet. Frost’s language is plain and straightforward, his lines inspired by the laconic speech of his Yankee neighbors.

But while poems like “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” are accessible enough to make Frost a grammar-school favorite, his poetry is contemplative and sometimes dark—concerned with themes like growing old and facing death. Robert Frost –New England’s poet of snowy woods, stone wall and apple trees.

I hope this “touch of Frost” will inspire you to read some of his work.

Here’s a link to Robert Frost’s page at Poets.org
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/192

It includes an account of Frost and JFK
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20540

The first poet invited to speak at a Presidential inaugural, Frost told the new President:

“Be more Irish than Harvard. Poetry and power is the formula for another Augustan Age. Don’t be afraid of power.”

 

Hear Robert Frost for yourself at Poets Out Loud:
http://robertfrostoutloud.com

This link is to Middlebury College’s online Frost exhibit
http://midddigital.middlebury.edu/local_files/robert_frost/index.html

This is the website of Frost House and Museum in Franconia, N.H. http://www.frostplace.org/html/museum.html

Robert Frost died on January 29, 1963. He had written his own epitaph, “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world,” etched on his headstone in a church cemetery in Bennington, VT.

Here is the NYTimes obituary published after his death.
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0129.html#article

This material is adapted from Don’t Know Much About Literature written in collaboration with Jenny Davis.

“I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.”

How about a national holiday today, celebrating poetry, in honor of Robert Frost –born March 26, 1874.

Apples, birches, hayfields and stone walls; simple features like these make up the landscape of four-time Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Frost’s poetry. Known as a poet of New England, Frost (1874-1963) spent much of his life working and wandering the woods and farmland of Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire. As a young man, he dropped out of Dartmouth and then Harvard, then drifted from job to job: teacher, newspaper editor, cobbler. His poetry career took off during a three-year trip to England with his wife Elinor where Ezra Pound aided the young poet. Frost’s language is plain and straightforward, his lines inspired by the laconic speech of his Yankee neighbors. But while poems like “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” are accessible enough to make Frost a grammar-school favorite, his poetry is contemplative and sometimes dark—concerned with themes like growing old and facing death.

Robert Frost died on January 29, 1963. He had written his own epitaph, the words above, etched on his headstone in a church cemetery in Bennington, VT.

Stop here a moment and take this Frost quiz.

1. In what city was Robert Frost born?
2. What Yankee saying does Frost’s neighbor repeat in the poem, “Mending Wall”?
3. Which President chose Frost to read a poem at his inauguration?
4. At that inauguration, why did Frost recite “The Gift Outright”?

Quiz adapted from Don’t Know Much About Literature

Here is the NYTimes obituary published after his death.
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0129.html#article

And this is a videoblog I made at Frost’s gravesite last August:
http://www.dontknowmuch.com/2009/08/touch-of-frost-a-videoblog/

This is the website of Frost House adn Museum in Franconia, N.H. http://www.frostplace.org/html/museum.html
Answers
1. San Francisco, California.
2. “Good fences make good neighbors.”
3. John F. Kennedy, in 1961.
4. He had written a new poem called “Dedication,” but couldn’t read it in the January glare; instead, he recited the 1942 poem, which he knew by heart.