Robert Frost

Robert Frost

Robert Frost, an Americian poet of the late 19th century, used nature in many of his writings. This paper will discuss the thought process of Frost during his writings, the many tools which he used, and provide two examples of his works.

Robert Frost was born in San Franciso on March 26, 1874, but later moved to Lawrence, Massachuschusetts (after his father died) where he did most of his writing. He was a simple man who taught, worked in a mill, was a reporter, was a New England farmer, and wrote. Throughout his life he had always been interested in literature. He attended Dartmouth College, but remained less than one semester. In 1894 he sold his first work “My Butterfly: An Elegy” to a New York journal. A year later he married Elinor White. From 1897 to 1899 he attended Harvard College as a special student but left before he acquired his degree. For the next ten years he wrote poems, operated a farm in Derry, New Hampshire, and taught at Derry’s Pinkerton Academy.

In 1912 he sold his farm and moved to England where he could work on his writings full time. He was an instant success! “A Boy’s Will” was accepted by a London Publisher and a year later so was “North of Boston”. He also began to get recognized in America.

The Frosts sailed for America in 1915 and landed in New York two days after the Americian release of ”North of Boston”. The book was a good success and he used the profits to buy a farm in Fanconia, New Hampshire. During this time Frost began to write his most successful poems.

Frost was once asked his thought process during writing; he responded:

“I sometimes speak from the last thing that happened to me. I got asked today if I think up poems. Do I think them up? How do I get the right one? Well, it is the hardest thing in the world to tell. But I don’t think up poems. I pick up a lot of things I thought of to make a poem; that is a lot of scattered thoughts through the days that are handy for the poem-that’s about all. That’s where the thinking comes in.”

That is truly an amazing feat; he would just walk around looking at things and a poem would come into his head. He would write these entire inspirational poems in his head and didn’t even think that it was unusual. The best poet of the 20th century did not write rough drafts!

In 1915 he moved to New England and...

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... the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. He once stated that his major goal in life was to write “a few poems that would be hard to get rid of.” Well, congratulations Mr. Frost.

Works Cited

Field, Evgene. Poems of Childhood. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons Inc. 1925

Gerber, Philip L. Robert Frost. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1967.

Greiner, Donald J. Robert Frost: The Poet and His Critics. Chicago: American Library Association, 1974.

Lathem, Edward Connery, ed. The Poetry of Robert Frost. New York: NA, 1969.

Lathem, Edward, ed. Interviews with Robert Frost. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. 1966.

NA. Robert Lee Frost. CD-Rom. Microsoft, 1999.

Reeve, F.D. Robert Frost in Russia. Boston: Little, Brown Publishers, 1964.

Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley. Robert Frost: The Trail by Existence. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1960.

Thompson, Lawrance. Robert Frost: The Early years, 1874-1915. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966.

Unger, Leonard, ed. American Writers. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, Inc. 1961.

Van Egmond, Peter. The Critical Reception of Robert Frost. Boston: G.K. Hall and Co., 1974.