THE FIGURE A POEM MAKES
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| Robert Frost |
ROBERT FROST (1874-1963) WAS BORN
IN San Francisco, California, His father William old. HIs Scottish mother
,the former Isabelle Moody , resumed
her career as a schoolteacher to support her family .the
family lived in Lawrence , Massachusetts
, with frost’s paternal grandfather .William Prescott frost ,who gave his grandson
a good schooling .In 1892 frost
graduated from a high school and attended Dartmouth College for few months .Over the next
years he held a number of jobs .Frost worked among others in a textile
mill and taught Latin at his mother’s school in Methuen ,Massachusetts .In 1894 the
New York Independent published frost’s
poem continued to write and publish his poem in magazines .In 1895 he married a
former schoolmate , Elinor white ; they had six children .
From 1897 to 199
frost Studied at Harvard , but left without receiving a degree .he moved to Derry , New Hampshire ,
working there as a cobber , farmer ,and
sent his poems to the Atlantic Monthly
they were returned with this not
; “ we regret that The Atlantic has no
place for your vigorous verse .”
In 1912 frost sold his farm and took his wife and four young
children of England .there he published his first collection of poems, A BOYS
WILL L, at the age of 39. It was followed by NORTH BOSTON (1914) , which
gained international reputation .the
collection contains some of frost’s best -known poems : mending
Wall , ‘ the death of the Hired man , ‘ Home Burial l,” ‘A servant s ,, ‘After
apple - Picking ‘ and ‘the wood-Pile ,’ the poems ,written with blank
verse or looser free verse of dialogue , were drawn from his own life ,
recurrent losses ,every tasks and his loneliness.
While in England Frost was deeply influenced y such English poets
as Rupert Brooke ,After returning to the
US in 1915 with his family , frost bought a farm near
Franconia , new Hampshire .when , when the editor of the Atlantic Monthly asked for poems , he gave the very
ones that had previously been rejected .Frost taught Later at Amherst college
(1916-38) and Michigan universities .
In 1916 he was made a member of the
National Institutes of Arts and Letters
.On the same year appeared his third collection
of verse ,MOUNTAIN INTERVAL , which contained such poems as the Road
Not taken ,’” The Oven bird , ‘ Birches
, ‘and ‘ “ the Hill Wife .’Frost’s poems
show deep appreciation of natural world and sensibility about the human aspirations.
His images - woods ,stars ,houses,
brooks,- are unusually taken from
everyday life .with his down -to - earth approach to his subjects , readers
found it is easy to follow the poet into deeper truths , without being burdened
with pedantry .Often Frost used the rhythms and vocabulary of ordinary speech
or even the looser free verse of dialogue .
In 1920 Frost purchased a farm in south Shaftsbury, Vermont,
near Middlebury college where he confounded the Bread Loaf School and
conference of English. His wife died I 1938 and he lost four of his children. Two
if his daughters suffered mental
breakdowns ,and his son carol , a frustrated poet and farmer ,led him to cling to the desire to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature after the death of his
wife , frost became strongly attracted to Kay Morrison, whom he employed as his secretary and adviser
.Frost also composed for her one of his
finest love poems ,’ a witness tree .’
Frost travelled in 1957 with his future biographer Lawrence ‘Thompson
to England and to Israel and Greece in 1961. He participated in the
inauguration of President John Kennedy in 1961 by reciting two of his poems
.When the sun and the wind prevented him from reading his new poem. “The
Preface ‘, frost recited his old poem , ‘The Gift Outright ,’ from memory ,
frost travelled in 1962 , in the soviet
Union as a member of a goodwill group .he had a long talk with premier Nikita Khrushchev,
whom he described as “ no fathead “ , as
smart , big and not a coward ,” Frost also reported that Khrushchev
had said the United states was “ too
liberal to fight ,”It caused a considerable stir in Washington,.
Among the honors and rewards frosts received were tributes from the U.S. Senate (1950), the American academy of Poets
(1953), new York University (1956), and Huntington Hartford foundation (1962).
In 1958 the congressional gold Medal (1962, the Edward MacDowell medal 1962. In
1930 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Amherst College
appointed him saimpson Lecturer for life 1949, and in 1958 he was made poetry consultant
for the Library of congress.
At the time of his death on January 29, 1963, frost was
considered a kind of unofficial poet laureate of the U.S.” I would have written
of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel
with the world,” Frost once said, .In his poems Frost depicted the field and
farms of his surroundings, observing the details of rural life l, which hide
universal meaning. His independent ,
elusive half humorous
view of the world produced
such remarks as “ I never take my side
in a quarrel “ , or “ I’m never serious except when I’m fooling , “ Although
frost’s works were generally praised the
lack of seriousness concerning social and political problems of the 1930s
annoyed some more socially oriented
critics . Later biographers have created a complex and contradictory portrait
of the poet. In Lawrence Thompson’s
humorless, three- volume official biography (1966-1976) Frost was presented was a misanthrope, anti-
intellectual, cruel land angry man , but in jay
Perini’s work (1999) he was again
viewed with sympathy ; “ he was a loner
who liked company ; a poet of isolation who south a mass audience ; a rebel who sought to fit in
. Although a family man to the core he frequently felt alienated from his wife
and children and withdrew into reveries. While preferring to stay home, he
traveled more than any poet of his generation to give lectures and reading even
though he remained terrified of public speaking to the end …..”
