Brittany Hendershot
E3H Research Paper
Mrs. Colbert
The First All American Poet: Robert Frost
Biography
Robert Frost was born on March 26th, 1874 in San Francisco, California. He was born to Isabelle Moodie Frost and William Prescott Frost. William Frost, a Harvard graduate, worked for the San Francisco Daily Evening Post, and Frost’s mother was a school teacher. After spending twelve years in San Francisco, Frost moved to the town of Lawrence, Massachusetts after his father died of tuberculosis. While attending Lawrence High School, Frost published several poems in the school magazine and was named class poet. He also played right end on the high school’s football team. In the fall of 1891, Frost was on top of the world; high school senior;editor of the school newspaper; and competing for the class valedictorian. Frost graduated top of his class in 1892, sharing valedictorian honors with his soon to be wife, Elinor White.
Although he passed Harvard’s entrance exams, Frost didn't have the money needed to attend the school. Instead he attended Dartmouth College, but left after less than a semester, and went on to pursue a variety of jobs ranging from teaching to working in a textile mill. In 1894, he had his first poem, “My Butterfly: an Elegy,” published in a weekly literary journal based in New York City called The Independent. During this time Frost tried to persuade Elinor to leave St. Lawrence University and marry him, but she was determined to complete her degree so she declined the proposal. Once Elinor graduated Frost proposed again and the two were married in December of 1895, and had their first child, Elliot, in 1896.
After his marriage, at the age of twenty-one, Frost spent two years helping his mother run a sma...
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...he last stanza the poem says “The woods are lovely, dark and deep”, this tells us that the speaker likes the woods and doesn't’ want to leave because of its beauty. Another literary device used by Frost is repetition. repetition is used on the last two verses of the poem. Both lines read: “And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before i sleep”. This repetition is emphasizing a point and ,makes it clear that the speaker has a long way home and must leave.
Literary Criticism
One of the most striking themes of Frost is man’s isolation in the world or man’s sense of isolation from his environment. Frost’s poetry has a “anti-social” feeling that is different from other poets at the time.According to Erin Brescia, Frost’s strong hatred towards city life, and his personal life are the reason behind the isolation and loneliness in his poems.
Robert Lee Frost began life in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. For an unknown reason, Frost believed for years that he was actually born in 1875. When Frost’s father died in 1885 his mother decided to move closer to her wealthy parents in Massachusetts. In California, Frost had dropped out of kindergarten after one day, and upon returning to the first grade, also dropped out. This was no deterrent on Frost to attend college. He was accepted to Harvard but instead attended Dartmouth because of his financial situation. Even though Frost found the school to be anything but challenging, he would not finish his time at Dartmouth, nor earn any formal degree in a school (Bengtsson). He once said of schooling that “Education is hanging around until you’ve caught on.” Interestingly enough, Robert Frost held several postions at credible schools, including Amherst and Harvard. Also, Frost was awarded an incredible amount of honorary degrees from Berkley to Yale (Parini 59). Frosts careers also ranged from editing for Henry Holt to raising poultry on his Derry, New Hampshire farm.
Robert Frost said many famous quotes throughout his lifetime, including “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on”. During early life Frost grew up in a home with a father who was rough around the edges and a mother who suffered from depression. Frost’s father died from alcoholism and his family promptly moved to Massachusetts. Robert Frost began to pursue a life in college but dropped out with barely a semester finished in order to work. Frost set two goals, one in which was to get a poem published, he struck out repeatedly in both goals. Frost fought to be published by big publishing companies and thrived to become a famous and well known writer. Frost left the United States in 1912 and returned from
“Four-time Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Lee Frost was born in San Francisco” on March 26, 1874 to his parents Isabelle and William (Dreese). Frost lived with his loving mother, abusive father, and sister Jeanie. “Because his father was a violent drunk, Frost as a child witnessed the fury and rage of his father on a regular basis, and if his mother spoke in disagreement, William became brutal, smashing furniture and yelling” (Dreese). His mother, Isabelle would “run into the streets with her children to find refuge” (Dreese). Frost suffered from “stomach pains and other mysterious ailments” due to all of the emotional situations he went through while he was young (Dreese). His mother home-schooled him after he couldn’t handle going to public school. His love of nature started to evolve as he g...
Robert Frost’s story starts on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California. Frost was born to father William Prescott and mother Isabelle Moodie; he also had a younger sister Jeanie. When Robert Frost was 11 years old, his father died of tuberculosis. Shortly after, Frost and his mother and sister, then 2 years old, moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts. In high school he became interested in reading and writing poetry. He enrolled in Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. He also enrolled in Harvard, but he never earned a formal college degree. After college, he had many jobs including being a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first poem, ‘My Butterfly’ was published in the New York Newspaper, The Independent, in November 8, 1894. In 1895, he married his wife Miriam White and she was a major inspiration for his poetry. Then in 1912, they moved to England; it was here he met many contemporary British poets who influenced his writing. He befriended Ezra Pound who helped him promote and publish Frost...
Frost uses a religious allusion to further enforce the objective of the poem. Whether Frost's argument is proven in a religious or scientific forum, it is nonetheless true. In directly citing these natural occurrences from inanimate, organic things such as plants, he also indirectly addresses the phenomena of aging in humans, in both physical and spiritual respects. Literally, this is a poem describing the seasons. Frosts interpretation of the seasons is original in the fact that it is not only autumn that causes him grief, but summer.
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words,” Robert Frost once said. As is made fairly obvious by this quote, Frost was an adroit thinker. It seems like he spent much of his life thinking about the little things. He often pondered the meaning and symbolism of things he found in nature. Many readers find Robert Frost’s poems to be straightforward, yet his work contains deeper layers of complexity beneath the surface. His poems are not what they seem to be at first glance. These deeper layers of complexity can be clearly seen in his poems “The Road Not Taken”, “Fire and Ice”, and “Birches”.
Robert Frost wrote many poems; however, one of his most popular themes involved isolation. The poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
One aspect Frost explores through his use of extended conceptual metaphor is the representation of life as a journey. The traveller, tempted by death, ultimately concludes that he has “miles to go”, where the repetition of the final line develops a sense of monotony, expressing the growing sense of enervation. Interpreted in a purely literal way the traveller is confronted by a simple conundrum: whether to stop or go. However, once read in context, Frost exposes the confrontation between “obligation and temptation” that encompasses both the poem and our lives. The traveller’s isolation from humanity and his exclusion from the woods whose owner “is in the village” perhaps mirrors Frost’s own sense of isolation. The change in rhyme scheme contributes uncertainty that, befitting of such a poe...
pages, his knowledge of the stars was edified and a poet was born. Frost‘s first poems were
Frost’s life was full of tragedies, yet he was still able to become an accomplished poet. According to Poets.org, Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco. When he was only 11 years old, Frost’s dad, William Prescott Frost, Jr, passed away. The death of his father caused his mother, Isabelle Moodie, to move her family to Massachusetts. Frost became interested in poetry in high school. His first published poem was “My Butterfly.” This poem was published in 1894 in a New York newspaper called The Independent (Poets.org).
Frost uses nature as a reflection of human experiences; just like humanity it can have seasons and life cycles. He uses different scenes to depict a certain mood for readers to step into the psychological happening of a man. The idea of how seasons change, Frost compares it through the life cycles that humans encounter. Contrary to popular opinion, I believe that nature is not Frost’s central theme in his poetry; it is about the relationship that man has with nature in which can be seen from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, “The Road Not Taken”, and “An Old Man’s Winter Night.”
The vivid imagery, symbolism, metaphors make his poetry elusive, through these elements Frost is able to give nature its dark side. It is these elements that must be analyzed to discover the hidden dark meaning within Roberts Frost’s poems. Lines that seemed simple at first become more complex after the reader analyzes the poem using elements of poetry. For example, in the poem Mending Wall it appears that Robert frost is talking about two man arguing about a wall but at a closer look the reader realizes that the poem is about the things that separate man from man, which can be viewed as destructive. In After Apple Picking, the darkness of nature is present through the man wanting sleep, which is symbolic of death.
Robert Frost was born to an editor for a father, and a member of the Swedenborgian church. His father started as a teacher, and then became the editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin. Isabelle Moodie, his mother, baptized him with the Swedenborgian church. Later on in Frost’s life, he left this church. Frost was born in San Francisco (“Biography of Robert Frost”, poemhunter.com). In 1994, be published his first poem, “The Butterfly: An Elegy,” on November 8, 1894 at age 20. He published this work in the New York newspaper Frost was a unique poet in the way that he stood in between the nineteenth-century poetry, and modern poetry. James M. Cox said that, “Though his career fully spans the modern period and though it is impossible to speak of him as anything other than a modern poet, it is difficult to place him in the main tradition of modern poetry,” (“Robert Frost”, poetryfoundation.org).
Robert Frost is an amazing poet that many admire today. He is an inspiration to many poets today. His themes and ideas are wonderful and are valued by many. His themes are plentiful however a main one used is the theme of nature. Frost uses nature to express his views as well as to make his poetry interesting and easy to imagine in your mind through the detail he supplies.
There Frost attended Lawrence High School where he met his future wife and co-valedictorian, Elinor White (1). The young not-yet poet became interested in reading and writing poetry during his years in high school (3). Frost published his first poem in his school's magazine. After graduating, Frost went to Dartmouth long enough to get into the Theta Delta Chi fraternity (4). Frost passed the entrance exams for Harvard, but instead attended Dartmouth in 1892, because it was cheaper, but also because his grandfather blamed Harvard for the bad habits of William. Frost stayed at Dartmouth for less than a term, then left (5). This caused a fit with Elinor, she wanted him to finish college and wouldn’t marry him until he graduated college.