Robert Frost - biog.
- Born 1874
- Moved to Massachusetts, New England, from San Francisco at 11 years, when father died
- Worked on a neighbour’s farm
- Published first poem when 16
- A troubled life: sister in an asylum, three daughters mentally disturbed (one dying of TB at 29), first son died at 3, second son committed suicide, and wife died of a heart attack in 1938
- Some say he was a bad father, but depression seemed to run in the family
- Had a number of breakdowns in his life
- Never completed his degree at Harvard
- Teacher, and sometime journalist
- Lived through interesting times: the industrial revolution, the Depression, two world wars, & the dramatic social changes of the ’50s and ’60s
- 50,000 copies to troops to build morale
- Spoke at Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961
- Visited Russia in 1962 on a goodwill mission
- Finally found happiness with Kay Morrison, his secretary and close companion, living with him for 25 years
- Awarded an honorary degree by UCD in the ’50s
- Well travelled in his later years
- Died at 89 in 1963
- One of America’s best-loved, and best-known poets
- Age of Modernism (experimental “anything goes”), but Frost not unduly influenced by it
- Set out to be understood
- Poems are traditionalist in form and metre
- Accessible poetry – language & interpretation
- Avoids obscure, esoteric references
- Mostly pastoral poems, yet philosophical, asking difficult & important questions
- Developed a sophisticated theory of poetic language he called ‘the sound of sense’, that sought to reproduce the exact tone of meaning in human speech – a notion of the Romantic Movement (esp. Wordsworth)
- Poetic voice is ironic, sceptical & detached
- Common theme of nature and man’s relationship with it
- Sense of nostalgia and wistfulness – cause of urbanisation
- Public persona of ‘typical Yankee’, hard-working with down-to-earth common sense has been questioned
- Most famous poem: ‘The Road Not Taken’