Frost's Life As A Poet

Robert Frost's Life as a Poet

Robert Lee Frost was born in San Francisco, California on March 26 of 1974 and died in Boston, Massachusetts on January 29 of 1963. Though he did not truly start publishing poems until age thirty-nine, Frost obtained four Pulitzer prizes in his writing career and was deemed one of the greatest twentieth century poets. His pastoral writing and skilled use of meter and rhythm has captured the attention of reader's and critics for decades (Academic American, 345). Frost was very fond of nature and the beauty of things around him and illustrated this in many of his poems. A reviewer stated that Frost was "always occupied with the complicated task of simply being sincere" (Faggen, I). This statement describes the writer well in the sense that Frost's works are very full of emotion. His use of the English language and the fact that he often seemed to be holding a little something back in his writing has made him one of the most celebrated American writers ever.

Frost's early years in life were very adverse. Frost's father, who named the boy after his idle Robert E. Lee, met his wife in Pennsylvania while they were both teaching at Bucknell Academy. William Prescott Frost Jr. and his wife Isabelle Moodie married and moved to San Francisco where Robert was born. William Frost was a Harvard graduate and was the city editor for the San Francisco Daily Evening Post. Frost's family moved a good amount and his father, who had serious drinking problems, died of tuberculosis in 1885 and left his mother and younger sister with very little money after burial expenses. The Frost's returned east to live with the paternal grandparents, but soon moved to Amherst, New Hampshire to stay with his great-aunt. Shortly after this the family returned to Lawrence, Mass. where Robert was placed in school as a third grader. Frost graduated here as co-valedictorian with Elinor White. Though he was moved often and had troubles with his father in his young life, Frost still maintained good grades and two years before he graduated Frost had "La Noche Triste" printed in the high school bulletin. This was his first printed poem. Two years later Frost graduated and read a speech titled "A Monument to After-Thought Unveiled" (Faggen, xi). This marked the end of Frost's childhood and the beginning of his adulthood and the many decisions that came with it.

After high school Frost went through a transition period in his life where he experienced many different things in many places in a short amount of time. Frost continued to move around a lot as his family had done. In 1892 Frost was engaged to Elinor White (his co-valedictorian) and begins college at Dartmouth. He chose this school instead of Harvard for financial reasons and his grandparents blamed much of Frost's father's problems on Harvard. He did not last long there however and left the school a few months later. He returned to Lawrence to work in a woolen mill for a year after which he departed to teach primary school in Salem. Frost became acquainted with Susan Hayes Ward when his poem "My Butterfly: An Elegy" was published in the paper that she edited. In 1895 Frost finally received his wish and married Elinor White, and gained a job as a reporter for a local paper. A year later his son, Elliot, was born and Frost began teaching again; this time at his mothers new school. Frost went to Harvard one year later, but left two years later because his wife and mother's health was not good. Frosts daughter was born in 1899 and Frost takes up poultry farming with some financial help from his grandfather (Faggen, xii). Over the next ten years Frost wrote poems, but had few published and he maintained his farm while expanding his family. In 1911 he sold the farm and moved to England a year later. It is interesting to note that he chose England with the flip of the coin because he and his wife were not sure whether to go to British Columbia or England. "The coin chose England" Frost later mentioned (Pritchard, 5). It was pure chance that Frost and his family found themselves in England. Here Frost focused totally on his writings and he began publishing works. The first one, "A Boy's Will," was published in 1913. At this point in Frost's life he finally settled down and started writing full time. His popularity grew as he received good reviews for his first publishing's. Though Frost started writing in high school and continued the habit, he was not considered a serious writer until this point in his life.

Frost started his writings at a relatively young age in high school and continued to write for the remainder of his life. He expressed a statement that his poetry was supposed to "trip the reader... into the boundless." (Jost, 399). This statement, referring to his younger days of writing, illustrates the simplistic style that Frost often wrote with at the time and he continued to write this way even after high school. His writing continued throughout Frost's post high school years, but they were rarely seen by the public until his farming days at his grandfather's poultry farm. Here, contrary to popular belief, Frost had three poems published in 1912 in the "Youth's Companion" which was a prominent journal at the time. After this Frost went to England which at the time seemed rather foolish since he had just started to establish himself in America, but in the end the decision brought his writing career into full swing (Pritchard, 5). Once in England, Frost published "A Boy's Will" which received good reviews in the country. This and another of his best considered works, "North of Boston," were published in the U.S. in 1913 and also received good reviews here. One critic, F.S. Flint, stated about a poem from "A Boy's Will" that "each poem is a complete expression of one mood, one emotion, one idea" (Wagner, 3). This statement embodies Frost's typical writing style as he always tried to totally embrace the experience he was describing in his writing. People saw the writer's background through his poems. Ezra Pound, one of Frost's friends and a critic, stated that Frost had the good sense to "speak naturally and to paint the thing, the thing as he sees it" ( Wagner, 1). This spoke of Frost's now well known sincerity that is seen in many of his works. In 1918 Frost received an honorary MA degree from Amherst College and became an English professor there. In accordance with the rest of his life's tradition he did not stay here long. Two years later Frost accepted a year long fellowship at the University of Michigan. In 1923 he published "Selected Poems" and returned to Amherst College