Robert Frost Bio

Robert Lee Frost

Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963), American poet, known for his verse concerning New England life. Born in San Francisco, Frost was educated at Dartmouth College and Harvard University. In 1885 his father died, and his mother moved with the family to Lawrence, Massachusetts. After graduation from high school, Frost attended college sporadically and earned a living by working variously as a bobbin boy in a wool mill, a shoemaker, a country schoolteacher, the editor of a rural newspaper, and a farmer. He also wrote poetry, but he had little success in having his poems published.

In 1912 Frost sold his farm, gave up a teaching post at the New Hampshire State Normal School, and moved with his family to England. There he met such established poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Lascelles Abercrombie, who became his friends and did much to aid his literary career. With their help, Frost's first two volumes of poetry were published; they were a group of lyrics entitled A Boy's Will (1913) and a series of dramatic monologues called North of Boston (1914). These works won him immediate recognition, and in 1915 Frost returned to the United States to find that his fame had preceded him. Thereafter he continued to write poetry with increasing success, while living on farms in Vermont and New Hampshire and teaching literature at Amherst College, the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and Dartmouth College. His volumes of poetry include Mountain Interval (1916), West-Running Brook (1928), A Further Range (1936), A Masque of Reason (1945), and In the Clearing (1962). Frost was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times (1924, 1931, 1937, 1943); in 1961, at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, he became the first poet to read a poem ("The Gift Outright") at a presidential inauguration.

Frost's poetry is based mainly upon the life and scenery of rural New England, and the language of his verse reflects the compact idiom of that region. Frost's colloquialism, however, is structured within traditional metrical and rhythmical schemes; he disliked free verse. Although he concentrates on ordinary subject matter, Frost's emotional range is wide and deep, and his poems often shift dramatically from a tone of humorous banter to the passionate expression of tragic experience. Much of his poetry is concerned with the interaction between humans and nature, but he did not share the vision of benevolent nature held by the romantic poets (see Romanticism). Instead, Frost regarded nature as a beautiful but dangerous force, worthy of admiration but nonetheless fraught with peril. The underlying philosophy of Frost's poetry is rooted in traditional New England individualism, and his work shows his strong sympathy for the values of early American society.

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