Robert Frost: Life and PoetryJoin now to read essay Robert Frost: Life and PoetryOne of America’s most popular poets, Robert Frost, achieved major recognition and reached the widest possible audience. His direct and easy to read poems make him one of the most recognized poets in the country. Robert Frost has the ability to make his poems accessible to anyone reading them. His use of everyday vernacular and traditional form of poetry makes it easy for readers, but understanding them is a different story. Robert Frost’s poems are very connotative in nature, making them very profound to read. One reason for this is his nomadic behavior. Frost lived in various places throughout his life. The majority of his poetry is about travel and the experiences he had.
’
Robert Frost: Daring. Live. Be. HumanHe was born in 1903 in Washington, D.C., a small town with more than one hundred residents. One day when he and two of his brothers, Michael and Richard, went to a local tavern where they had learned to play guitar. The brothers began to play and when they were ready to start playing, Michael walked across the street and took a note of how he wanted to play. He played so perfectly, Michael felt he should just take the note as well, so Robert decided to continue, learning the guitar with Michael. The next day, August 15th, Michael and Richard returned to Washington for school. They started learning in St. Petersburg and moved to a small town, named Cuyahoga, about three miles on the north shore of Lake Erie. After a few more long days of intensive study, they landed in Cuyahoga, the country’s most beautiful fishing village, where they learned to play the violin and, after a great deal of hard work, they came to be known as “The Dead Poets.” In this sense, Robert remained unknown among the nation and the people there; in fact, in most of his poems he was known as the “Dead Pig Poet.” Robert worked as a small printer, writing poetry and sketches on blackboard. He also wrote poems and, as he wrote, he had many different occupations, most of which were written in English while also being known professionally as such. The only exception was to be a painter or for writing a book, he went to a painting class to practice he art. His work in his painting class was very colorful, even using colors that he had no sense of (he did include black and white). His first writing was published in 1892 and he began to write in 1894. In 1893 he decided that he wanted to draw, using his skills in drawing from various sources, to get rid of the need for words. Instead, he chose an easy, natural way to depict his characters: a circle with the letters “F,” and two dots of pencil for representing objects. According to his father, Mr. Frost was the first to put out his pen, and he loved to draw, particularly if the circle was made with a thin layer of paper. After he finished drawing, he wrote at home in the neighborhood newspaper, “No matter how good I could remember or how good I saw, I always liked “F” and the letters F. The letters F and G, which he placed next to his head after he had drawn, became the key symbols, and then the circle. Frost also used many other artistic concepts and techniques to draw in paintings. But he became so interested in painting in general as a child that after he did an internship at St. Jude Children’s Hospital and started his own business, in 1905 they sold the company to St. Jude for two million dollars. In 1909, shortly after this company’s completion,
’
Robert Frost: Daring. Live. Be. HumanHe was born in 1903 in Washington, D.C., a small town with more than one hundred residents. One day when he and two of his brothers, Michael and Richard, went to a local tavern where they had learned to play guitar. The brothers began to play and when they were ready to start playing, Michael walked across the street and took a note of how he wanted to play. He played so perfectly, Michael felt he should just take the note as well, so Robert decided to continue, learning the guitar with Michael. The next day, August 15th, Michael and Richard returned to Washington for school. They started learning in St. Petersburg and moved to a small town, named Cuyahoga, about three miles on the north shore of Lake Erie. After a few more long days of intensive study, they landed in Cuyahoga, the country’s most beautiful fishing village, where they learned to play the violin and, after a great deal of hard work, they came to be known as “The Dead Poets.” In this sense, Robert remained unknown among the nation and the people there; in fact, in most of his poems he was known as the “Dead Pig Poet.” Robert worked as a small printer, writing poetry and sketches on blackboard. He also wrote poems and, as he wrote, he had many different occupations, most of which were written in English while also being known professionally as such. The only exception was to be a painter or for writing a book, he went to a painting class to practice he art. His work in his painting class was very colorful, even using colors that he had no sense of (he did include black and white). His first writing was published in 1892 and he began to write in 1894. In 1893 he decided that he wanted to draw, using his skills in drawing from various sources, to get rid of the need for words. Instead, he chose an easy, natural way to depict his characters: a circle with the letters “F,” and two dots of pencil for representing objects. According to his father, Mr. Frost was the first to put out his pen, and he loved to draw, particularly if the circle was made with a thin layer of paper. After he finished drawing, he wrote at home in the neighborhood newspaper, “No matter how good I could remember or how good I saw, I always liked “F” and the letters F. The letters F and G, which he placed next to his head after he had drawn, became the key symbols, and then the circle. Frost also used many other artistic concepts and techniques to draw in paintings. But he became so interested in painting in general as a child that after he did an internship at St. Jude Children’s Hospital and started his own business, in 1905 they sold the company to St. Jude for two million dollars. In 1909, shortly after this company’s completion,
Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26th, 1874 first child of Isabelle Moodie and William Prescott Frost, Jr. and was named after the confederate general Robert E. Lee. In 1885, after his father’s death, and at the age of 11 his family (with $8 in their possession) left California and settled in Lawrence, Massachusetts (Richardson, 1). There he attended and graduated high school. He was accepted and attended Dartmouth College, but stayed for less than a semester (Winnick, 1). He taught, worked at a mill and as a reporter right after that. In 1894, at just 20 years old, he sold “My Butterfly: An Elegy” to The Independent, a New York literary journal. A year later he married Elinor White after three years of courtship. Frost then attended Harvard College, from 1897 to 1899 as a special student but he never graduated and left without a degree. For the next ten years he wrote poems and worked at Derry’s Pinkerton Academy (Winnick, 1).
After being settled for many years, he sold the farm in 1912. He used the money from the house and moved to England where he could concentrate solely on his writing. On that note he wrote “A Boy’s Will” and it was accepted by a publisher. It was released in 1913 to favorable reviews that resulted in the American release of the book. Frost now had a transatlantic reputation (Winnick, 2).
In February of 1915, Frost and his family moved back to New York City. Frost’s book, the “North of Boston”, was released two days after his arrival in New York. With sales of “A Boy’s Will” and “North of Boston”, Frost was able to buy a farm in Franconia, NH. There he wrote “Mountain Interval”, published in 1916. In New Hampshire, Frost also embarked on a long career of writing, teaching, and lecturing. In 1924, he received a Pulitzer Prize in poetry for “New Hampshire”. In 1925 Frost’s daughter Marjorie was hospitalized with pneumonia, a peri-cardiac infection, chronic appendicitis and nervous exhaustion. Over the next few years, Marjorie became more ill and was put in and out of hospitals. Amidst all this, Frost still received critical acclaim and various accolades for his work “Collected Poems”. In 1934 Marjorie died of perpetual fever, and soon after Frost and his wife moved to Key West, FL (Richardson, 5). Over the next years he received an unprecedented number and range of literary, academic, and public honors (Winnick, 2). Robert Frost died in January 29th, 1963 leaving behind a great line of literary works that have become well-known and beloved pieces of American literature.
The reoccurring theme of Robert Frost poems is one of travel; one can tell that he was a nomadic being. Through out his life he moved a lot. He lived in various places including Cambridge, Miami, Coconut Grove, Key West, New Hampshire, Gainesville, New York City and London. His poems are reflected by his life greatly.
Robert Frost’s most famous poem to date is probably “The Road Not Taken”. It depicts Frost standing at a fork in a road, undecided about which path to take. He decides to take the path that is less traveled on, and he imagined this choice to be very important. He will someday tell himself the he took the road less frequented, and gain satisfaction not conforming to the same path in life that everyone else has. This poem relies heavily on imagery, considering the readers must imagine two roads and then a person at the fork, pondering his next move. He describes one of the roads as “grassy and wanted wear”. The tone of the poem is set mainly at the end:
I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.The tone of this poem is one of wonderment and content. The traveler in the poem is content with his choice, a choice of risk and uncertainty. But nonetheless, the theme then becomes that even one as an individual cannot be identical to all others around them, and so can’t the paths