Robert Frost

This article is about the poet. For other people with the same name, see Robert Frost (disambiguation).

Robert Frost
Frost in 1949
Frost in 1949
Born(1874-03-26)March 26, 1874
San Francisco, California, U.S.
DiedJanuary 29, 1963(1963-01-29) (aged 88)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
OccupationPoet, playwright
Notable worksA Boy's Will, North of Boston, New Hampshire[1]
Notable awards
Spouse
Elinor Miriam White
​
​
(m. 1895; died 1938)​
Children6
Signature

Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech,[2] Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.[3]

Frequently honored during his lifetime, Frost is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution".[4] Frost was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 and in 1961 was named poet laureate of Vermont. Randall Jarrell wrote: "Robert Frost, along with Stevens and Eliot, seems to me the greatest of the American poets of this century. Frost's virtues are extraordinary. No other living poet has written so well about the actions of ordinary men; his wonderful dramatic monologues or dramatic scenes come out of a knowledge of people that few poets have had, and they are written in a verse that uses, sometimes with absolute mastery, the rhythms of actual speech".[5] In his 1939 essay "The Figure a Poem Makes", Frost explains his poetics: "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew...[Poetry] must be a revelation, or a series of revelations, for the poet as for the reader. For it to be that there must have been the greatest freedom of the material to move about in it and to establish relations in it regardless of time and space, previous relation, and everything but affinity."[6]

  1. ^ "Robert Frost". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
  2. ^ "Robert Frost". Encyclopædia Britannica (Online ed.). 2008. Retrieved 2008-12-21.
  3. ^ "Robert Frost". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved July 4, 2024.
  4. ^ Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jean C. Stine, Bridget Broderick, and Daniel G. Marowski. Vol. 26. Detroit: Gale Research, 1983. p 110.
  5. ^ Jarrell, Randall. "Fifty Years of American Poetry." No Other Book: Selected Essays. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.
  6. ^ Joyce Carol Oates, ed. (2000). The Best American Essays of the Century. p. 176.