The Notebooks of Robert Frost

by Robert Frost, Robert Faggen (Editor)

Robert Frost is one of the most widely read, well loved, and misunderstood of modern writers. In his day, he was also an inveterate note-taker, penning thousands of intense aphoristic thoughts, observations, and meditations in small pocket pads and school theme books throughout his life. These notebooks, transcribed and presented here in their entirety for the first time, offer unprecedented insight into Frost's complex and often highly contradictory thinking about poetics, politics, education, psychology, science, and religion--his attitude toward Marxism, the New Deal, World War--as well as Yeats, Pound, Santayana, and William James. Covering a period from the late 1890s to early 1960s, the notebooks reveal the full range of the mind of one of America's greatest poets. Their depth and complexity convey the restless and probing quality of his thought, and show how the unruliness of chaotic modernity was always just beneath his appearance of supreme poetic control. Edited by preeminent Frost scholar Robert Faggen and annotated to help readers with the poet's more elusive references, the notebooks are also thoroughly cross-referenced, marking thematic connections within these and Frost's other writings, including his poetry, letters, and other prose. This is a major new addition to the canon of Robert Frost's writings.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Memoir, Reference, Writing

809 pages, Hardcover

First published January 30, 2007

About the author

Flinty, moody, plainspoken and deep, Robert Frost was one of America's most popular 20th-century poets. Frost was farming in Derry, New Hampshire when, at the age of 38, he sold the farm, uprooted his family and moved to England, where he devoted himself to his poetry. His first two books of verse, A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914), were immediate successes. In 1915 he returned to the United States and continued to write while living in New Hampshire and then Vermont. His pastoral images of apple trees and stone fences -- along with his solitary, man-of-few-words poetic voice -- helped define the modern image of rural New England. Frost's poems include "Mending Wall" ("Good fences make good neighbors"), "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" ("Whose woods these are I think I know"), and perhaps his most famous work, "The Road Not Taken" ("Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- / I took the one less traveled by"). Frost was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times: in 1924, 1931, 1937 and 1943. He also served as "Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress" from 1958-59; that position was renamed as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry (or simply Poet Laureate) in 1986.

Frost recited his poem "The Gift Outright" at the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy... Frost attended both Dartmouth College and Harvard, but did not graduate from either school... Frost preferred traditional rhyme and meter in poetry; his famous dismissal of free verse was, "I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down."

Reviews

[Therese L. Broderick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I barreled through this compendium of Mr. Frost's jottings -- 688 pages of transcriptions of 48 writing notebooks -- not from stubbornness, but from fascination. This treasure trove is revelatory, stimulating, and provocative, not only about literature, but also about science, politics, education, religion, love and marriage. Inexhaustible: I'll be re-reading parts for many years to come.

[Dana Gibson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of things I did not understand. These notebooks were written by Robert Frost for Robert Frost. There were some interesting insights gained, but it is difficult reading.

[Brian Wasserman · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you are looking for a treasure map for Robert Frosts brain- this isnt it! Most of the entries are nonsense. The Introduction has a helpful advisory for anyone considering to venture into Robert Frosts labyrinthine notebooks, that Robert Frost liked to be mischevious, and from the look of it could be one long joke to send readers on a path to nowhere.

[Chris]

ed Robert Faggen

[Jody · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really tried again to read this book. I love R.F. but reading his notebooks/notes is tedious. I would have better luck, I think, if I was studying and writing a paper about him. This is more of a reference book to me.