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Robert Frost: A Life
This fascinating reassessment of America's most popular and famous poet reveals a more complex and enigmatic man than many readers might expect. Jay Parini spent over twenty years interviewing friends of Robert Frost and working in the poet's archives at Dartmouth, Amherst, and elsewhere to produce this definitive and insightful biography of both the public and private man. While he depicts the various stages of Frost's colorful life, Parini also sensitively explores the poet's psyche, showing how he dealt with adversity, family tragedy, and depression. By taking the reader into the poetry itself, which he reads closely and brilliantly, Parini offers an insightful road map to Frost's remarkable world.
528 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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492 people want to read
About the author
Jay Parini
192 books152 followersJay Parini (born 1948) is an American writer and academic. He is known for novels and poetry, biography and criticism.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
August 27, 2012
I've read several Frost biographies and consider this the best one. Parini not only tries to make a corrective and a balanced treatment to Lawrance Thompson's hatchet job bio, but as a poet himself, skillfully and sensitively interprets Frost's work through each chapter of his life.
Thompson was hand-picked by Frost to be his official biographer, but came to hate his subject, and portrayed Frost to the world in his darkest and ugliest moods. What great artist can win public sentiment when only their weaknesses and reactions to personal tragedy are magnified?
This bio is much more fairer and sympathetic to Frost, but is never fawningly so. It's a book I love to return to often.
Thompson was hand-picked by Frost to be his official biographer, but came to hate his subject, and portrayed Frost to the world in his darkest and ugliest moods. What great artist can win public sentiment when only their weaknesses and reactions to personal tragedy are magnified?
This bio is much more fairer and sympathetic to Frost, but is never fawningly so. It's a book I love to return to often.
January 30, 2023
Jay is an excellent biographer and if you enjoy Frost’s poetry you’ll enjoy this book. Two takeaways I’ll leave with you: I was surprised that Frost was somewhat anxious for recognition and fame; The Road Less Traveled means exactly the opposite of what most people think it means.
October 19, 2025
Robert Frost’s reputation has undergone a couple of revisions over the decades. First it was the avuncular but flinty teller o’ tales with the tossled white hair, hard to keep straight from Carl Sandberg (whom Frost despised and feared). Then, in the late fifties, Randall Jarrell published his justly famous “dark Frost” essay which added a corrective depth and nuance to Mr. Road Less Traveled. Then Frost’s authorized biography came out soon after Frost’s death in ’63, written by his hand-chosen biographer and erstwhile friend Lawrance (that’s how it’s spelled) Thomson; to everyone’s surprise, this turned out to be a bitter invective against Frost personally, and it led to the darkening of not only Frost’s poems, but his personality and character as well: bad dad, bad husband, vindictive, jealous, money-grubbing fraud. Then came the re-re-reevaluation of Frost’s reputation, which brings us to Jay Parini’s good-intentioned, well-wrought biography.
Unlike virtually all the other High Modernist poets, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot included, Frost was a true classicist. His Latin was excellent and his Greek apparently not far behind. Pound and Eliot, who “wore their learning on their sleeve,” as Parini puts it, were schoolboys in comparison. Although Eliot used to make deprecating noises about his own learning, he nevertheless loved Latin and Greek epigrams to give gravitas to ape neck Sweeney and the young man carbuncular and tell us all we need to know at least one foreign language thoroughly. But it was Frost who could quote Catullus from memory, and, I’m guessing, with all the stresses and beats in place.
Frost the Farmer was pretty much a slob. He used to poke fun at his own shortcomings and laziness, but Parini provides details that are illuminating. First off, Frost may have been the only dirt farmer in New Hampshire with a trust fund from his grandfather. The farm itself was a gift from the worried old gent. Neither the yearly influx of cash nor the farm were enough to make Frost what you’d call a gentleman farmer, but they provided enough livelihood to enable him to be a poor farmer and – and this is the important part – write most of the poems that appeared in his first two books “A Boy’s Will” and “North of Boston.” But as for the farming, don’t think Frost’s aw-shucks accounts of how bad he was were exaggerations – when after ten years or so it came time to sell it, the only taker was the bank because the house and property had become so rundown.
So what about Frost’s character? Was he a jerk? Does it matter? Last question first: it doesn’t matter; I don’t have to deal with the guy, but I do have to read his poems, and some of his poems are great. But the other questions are of interest to me as well, if only to help me muddle through my own life (biography as moral uplift – not to sound all 19th century here, but what the hell else is there beyond voyeurism and schadenfreud?). Far be it for me to psychologically pin down Frost – I lack the credentials for that – but I must say, I suspect a Narcissist (as in the Narcissistic Personality Disorder sense). Again, I am no expert, just a web-surfer, but Frost seems to have existed on a plane that went beyond mere selfishness, artistic self-absorption, and vanity. On a personal level he seems to have sucked the people closest to himself, including his whole family, into a Dark Hole of Need. At a slight distance was a carefully-cultivated (and occasionally culled) group of devotees, fans, students, Academics Who Could Do Him Good, and Literary Mediocrities with Clout (Louis Untermeyer in particular; their published correspondence is illuminating).
Frost the family man is a puzzle. He suffered calamities of 19th century proportion. He seems to have had a kind of baffler effect on the kids, at once close and caring and formidably remote (maybe this is the definition of fatherhood). One son died of cholera. His favorite daughter died of puerperal fever. His son committed suicide after a feckless perhaps unbalanced existence. Frost issued constant self-deprecatory comments, some of which are quite moving (and desolate) – for instance, his not unreasonable belief that he basically wore his wife out with the demands of his literary career and personal needs.
Yes, Frost was capable of high-level introspection, and the best of his poetry (most written before c. 1925) reflects this sensitivity and ability to empathize. What happened, apparently, is that this turned into a bit of a shtick, which is a big risk for the introspective, self-critical person. Once a habit of self-criticism develops, it becomes easy to start considering yourself a pretty fine fellow what with all that self-loathing and those muttered deprecations. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! This leads to smugness and a rote kind of agenbite of inwit that is usually so seasoned with irony that it becomes meaningless. Frost may have succumbed to this in his later years.
***
My biggest objection to Frost’s character is the fact he was an outrageous hypocrite, and nowhere so when it came to academics. As no other poet before him, Robert Frost was a poetry professor, the man who almost single handedly invented university-based “professional” poetry, what Donald Hall contemptuously refers to as the “Po Biz.” Whether this is good or bad I have no room for here (and many, many contradictory opinions). But Robert Frost was an independent who didn’t much like college, by Gawd, and who coined all sorts of witty down-home maxims to support his outsider status. And yet he pursued colleges, college administrators, and college accommodations, readings, and lectures his entire life.
Frost’s hypocrisy was most evident his first time out, when Amherst College, under the leadership of the visionary (some would say radical) president Alexander Meiklejohn. Part of Meiklejohn’s reforms consisted of bringing noted poet Robert Frost in as part of the faculty – the first university head of real significance to bring a poet in from out of the cold. Frost readily accepted, since it was financially a pretty sweet deal (Frost’s offers from universities were, his entire life, astonishingly generous). Frost proved himself a popular guy, of course, informal at a time (early-1920s) when university life was still pretty much cap-n-gown formality. When he talked about poetry he was at his best. On other subjects (pre-Shakespeare English drama was one of his first classes) he tended to ramble and fail to keep on topic, provoking the ire of colleagues who actually knew their subjects. At Frost’s worse moments, his students would play cards at their desks, knowing he wouldn’t do anything about it, given his oft-claimed objection to formal discipline.
Okay, so Frost was a lousy professor. No big deal. What is galling is the fact that Frost wanted his form of loose, informal, and sometimes ill-informed style of teaching to be acceptable for Robert Frost alone. Everybody else who deviated from a rigorous, traditional educational path was a slacker and Frost complained about “progressive” educational techniques bitterly – going so far as to complain about President Meiklejohn who had brought Frost on board in an educationally progressive move in the first place. This desire of Frost’s to be the dangerous outsider poet with a cushy salary, house, pension, and lots of adoring students has become the template for thousands of American poetry professors to follow.
***
Robert Frost was a great poet. He just was, and this is not easy for me to say, because I don’t often enjoy him much. But the older I get, the more I begin to suspect that he was better than Pound and Eliot, and even my idol Wallace Stevens. “Better.” What does that mean? More there there, I guess. As a young person, I didn’t care at all for Frost’s homey diction - in a basic sense, I couldn’t really tell him apart from Wordsworth. But as the years go on, all my favorite velveteen rabbits have had their fur rubbed off. Eliot outside of “Prufrock” and some of “The Wasteland” seems formulaic and turgid (apeneck Sweeney and The Hippopotamus). I love Stevens, but the Imagination-as-Religion idea over and over and over again in a narrowing declension of abstraction just numbs me now. Pound ruined his gift to become a political fruitcake, and his early stuff (before his fake Chinese translations, which I still adore) are usually both fussy and purple. Frost sees things then sees through them then keeps going…
I waited so long to finish this piece that I don’t recall hat Parnini had to say about Frost’s work, and I don’t feel like wading back in to find out. But this was a fine biography of a difficult (in a multitude of ways) poet.
Unlike virtually all the other High Modernist poets, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot included, Frost was a true classicist. His Latin was excellent and his Greek apparently not far behind. Pound and Eliot, who “wore their learning on their sleeve,” as Parini puts it, were schoolboys in comparison. Although Eliot used to make deprecating noises about his own learning, he nevertheless loved Latin and Greek epigrams to give gravitas to ape neck Sweeney and the young man carbuncular and tell us all we need to know at least one foreign language thoroughly. But it was Frost who could quote Catullus from memory, and, I’m guessing, with all the stresses and beats in place.
Frost the Farmer was pretty much a slob. He used to poke fun at his own shortcomings and laziness, but Parini provides details that are illuminating. First off, Frost may have been the only dirt farmer in New Hampshire with a trust fund from his grandfather. The farm itself was a gift from the worried old gent. Neither the yearly influx of cash nor the farm were enough to make Frost what you’d call a gentleman farmer, but they provided enough livelihood to enable him to be a poor farmer and – and this is the important part – write most of the poems that appeared in his first two books “A Boy’s Will” and “North of Boston.” But as for the farming, don’t think Frost’s aw-shucks accounts of how bad he was were exaggerations – when after ten years or so it came time to sell it, the only taker was the bank because the house and property had become so rundown.
So what about Frost’s character? Was he a jerk? Does it matter? Last question first: it doesn’t matter; I don’t have to deal with the guy, but I do have to read his poems, and some of his poems are great. But the other questions are of interest to me as well, if only to help me muddle through my own life (biography as moral uplift – not to sound all 19th century here, but what the hell else is there beyond voyeurism and schadenfreud?). Far be it for me to psychologically pin down Frost – I lack the credentials for that – but I must say, I suspect a Narcissist (as in the Narcissistic Personality Disorder sense). Again, I am no expert, just a web-surfer, but Frost seems to have existed on a plane that went beyond mere selfishness, artistic self-absorption, and vanity. On a personal level he seems to have sucked the people closest to himself, including his whole family, into a Dark Hole of Need. At a slight distance was a carefully-cultivated (and occasionally culled) group of devotees, fans, students, Academics Who Could Do Him Good, and Literary Mediocrities with Clout (Louis Untermeyer in particular; their published correspondence is illuminating).
Frost the family man is a puzzle. He suffered calamities of 19th century proportion. He seems to have had a kind of baffler effect on the kids, at once close and caring and formidably remote (maybe this is the definition of fatherhood). One son died of cholera. His favorite daughter died of puerperal fever. His son committed suicide after a feckless perhaps unbalanced existence. Frost issued constant self-deprecatory comments, some of which are quite moving (and desolate) – for instance, his not unreasonable belief that he basically wore his wife out with the demands of his literary career and personal needs.
Yes, Frost was capable of high-level introspection, and the best of his poetry (most written before c. 1925) reflects this sensitivity and ability to empathize. What happened, apparently, is that this turned into a bit of a shtick, which is a big risk for the introspective, self-critical person. Once a habit of self-criticism develops, it becomes easy to start considering yourself a pretty fine fellow what with all that self-loathing and those muttered deprecations. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! This leads to smugness and a rote kind of agenbite of inwit that is usually so seasoned with irony that it becomes meaningless. Frost may have succumbed to this in his later years.
***
My biggest objection to Frost’s character is the fact he was an outrageous hypocrite, and nowhere so when it came to academics. As no other poet before him, Robert Frost was a poetry professor, the man who almost single handedly invented university-based “professional” poetry, what Donald Hall contemptuously refers to as the “Po Biz.” Whether this is good or bad I have no room for here (and many, many contradictory opinions). But Robert Frost was an independent who didn’t much like college, by Gawd, and who coined all sorts of witty down-home maxims to support his outsider status. And yet he pursued colleges, college administrators, and college accommodations, readings, and lectures his entire life.
Frost’s hypocrisy was most evident his first time out, when Amherst College, under the leadership of the visionary (some would say radical) president Alexander Meiklejohn. Part of Meiklejohn’s reforms consisted of bringing noted poet Robert Frost in as part of the faculty – the first university head of real significance to bring a poet in from out of the cold. Frost readily accepted, since it was financially a pretty sweet deal (Frost’s offers from universities were, his entire life, astonishingly generous). Frost proved himself a popular guy, of course, informal at a time (early-1920s) when university life was still pretty much cap-n-gown formality. When he talked about poetry he was at his best. On other subjects (pre-Shakespeare English drama was one of his first classes) he tended to ramble and fail to keep on topic, provoking the ire of colleagues who actually knew their subjects. At Frost’s worse moments, his students would play cards at their desks, knowing he wouldn’t do anything about it, given his oft-claimed objection to formal discipline.
Okay, so Frost was a lousy professor. No big deal. What is galling is the fact that Frost wanted his form of loose, informal, and sometimes ill-informed style of teaching to be acceptable for Robert Frost alone. Everybody else who deviated from a rigorous, traditional educational path was a slacker and Frost complained about “progressive” educational techniques bitterly – going so far as to complain about President Meiklejohn who had brought Frost on board in an educationally progressive move in the first place. This desire of Frost’s to be the dangerous outsider poet with a cushy salary, house, pension, and lots of adoring students has become the template for thousands of American poetry professors to follow.
***
Robert Frost was a great poet. He just was, and this is not easy for me to say, because I don’t often enjoy him much. But the older I get, the more I begin to suspect that he was better than Pound and Eliot, and even my idol Wallace Stevens. “Better.” What does that mean? More there there, I guess. As a young person, I didn’t care at all for Frost’s homey diction - in a basic sense, I couldn’t really tell him apart from Wordsworth. But as the years go on, all my favorite velveteen rabbits have had their fur rubbed off. Eliot outside of “Prufrock” and some of “The Wasteland” seems formulaic and turgid (apeneck Sweeney and The Hippopotamus). I love Stevens, but the Imagination-as-Religion idea over and over and over again in a narrowing declension of abstraction just numbs me now. Pound ruined his gift to become a political fruitcake, and his early stuff (before his fake Chinese translations, which I still adore) are usually both fussy and purple. Frost sees things then sees through them then keeps going…
I waited so long to finish this piece that I don’t recall hat Parnini had to say about Frost’s work, and I don’t feel like wading back in to find out. But this was a fine biography of a difficult (in a multitude of ways) poet.
August 16, 2019
Born in San Francisco, named after Robert E Lee (whom his father admired).
from age 7 to the end of his life, believed he heard voices. "He liked to be alone and just to listen, to communicate with the spirit-world."
"We go to college to be given one more chance to learn to read in case we haven't learned in High School. Once we have learned to read, the rest can be trusted to add itself unto us."
His sister suffered from psych problems; he feared it in himself and often suffered from depression. Poetry was "a momentary stay against confusion."
One of the first poets to use ordinary language - this discovery early on was a "moment of epiphany". Although many of his "simple" poems have alternate meanings, many on art itself.
The farm in Derry, MA was the source of inspiration, but not until his trip to England did he finish many of the poems that became his first book (which was published in England first).
Also lived in white Mountains of NH (to alleviate hay fever) and Bennington/Arlington/Shaftsbury area of Vt.
In addition to farming & poetry, he supported himself with teaching. Originally taught el- and 2nd, but spent his career years teaching & being a poet-in-residence, mostly at Amherst.
"They say when you run away from a place it is yourself you are generally running away from and that goes with you and is the first thing you meet in the next place you turn up."
Awarded 4 Pulitzer Prizes, but no Nobel - he was disappointed when Faulkner got the Nobel.
"Poetry provides the one permissible was of saying one thing and meaning another."
The Agrarian Movement - in the 1920's/1930's - against industrialism & commercialism, and progress.
Frost adored the Lord of Misrule and was an instigator.
According to Ginsberg, Frost created an audience for poetry readings.
"Corridors of Woe" after three of his children died, then his long-married wife.
He thought for a person to own a property he needed to possess it and be possessed by it.
IN the 50's/60's he was am ambassador of sorts to Greece, Russia, Israel, etc.
His poems deal with loneliness and total obliteration...
He recited an older poem - The GIft Outright - at Kennedy's inauguration. JFK asked him to change a line and he mentioned this as he recited it.
One earlier bio painted him as a harsh, unloving parent, but the author had an ax to grind....
from age 7 to the end of his life, believed he heard voices. "He liked to be alone and just to listen, to communicate with the spirit-world."
"We go to college to be given one more chance to learn to read in case we haven't learned in High School. Once we have learned to read, the rest can be trusted to add itself unto us."
His sister suffered from psych problems; he feared it in himself and often suffered from depression. Poetry was "a momentary stay against confusion."
One of the first poets to use ordinary language - this discovery early on was a "moment of epiphany". Although many of his "simple" poems have alternate meanings, many on art itself.
The farm in Derry, MA was the source of inspiration, but not until his trip to England did he finish many of the poems that became his first book (which was published in England first).
Also lived in white Mountains of NH (to alleviate hay fever) and Bennington/Arlington/Shaftsbury area of Vt.
In addition to farming & poetry, he supported himself with teaching. Originally taught el- and 2nd, but spent his career years teaching & being a poet-in-residence, mostly at Amherst.
"They say when you run away from a place it is yourself you are generally running away from and that goes with you and is the first thing you meet in the next place you turn up."
Awarded 4 Pulitzer Prizes, but no Nobel - he was disappointed when Faulkner got the Nobel.
"Poetry provides the one permissible was of saying one thing and meaning another."
The Agrarian Movement - in the 1920's/1930's - against industrialism & commercialism, and progress.
Frost adored the Lord of Misrule and was an instigator.
According to Ginsberg, Frost created an audience for poetry readings.
"Corridors of Woe" after three of his children died, then his long-married wife.
He thought for a person to own a property he needed to possess it and be possessed by it.
IN the 50's/60's he was am ambassador of sorts to Greece, Russia, Israel, etc.
His poems deal with loneliness and total obliteration...
He recited an older poem - The GIft Outright - at Kennedy's inauguration. JFK asked him to change a line and he mentioned this as he recited it.
One earlier bio painted him as a harsh, unloving parent, but the author had an ax to grind....
November 30, 2014
Boring, tedious, and weighed down by superfluous detail. Parini paints a portrait of a poet that is privileged and pampered. The excerpts he chooses as illustrations are obscure and often with absurd and far-fetched interpretations. Reading this book from cover to cover was arduous and painstaking. It does not inspire the reader to want to return to the book, but rather instills a desire for the book to come to a quick and abrupt end which, unfortunately, takes too long to arrive.
April 4, 2018
This is an insightful biography of Robert Frost, the public and the private man. Jay Parini is a good critic, who admires Frost. He reads his poems closely and brilliantly. And he feels earlier biographers have unfairly besmirched Frost's image.
I have not read the other biographies, nor will I read them. I like Robert Frost's poetry but I thoroughly dislike his person after reading this book, in spite of Parini's generous efforts to show Frost in a better light.
Naturally, the focus is on Frost, the giant New England poet. The tragic lives of his children are barely mentioned: a son committed suicide, a daughter was committed to an insane asylum, and the only happy daughter Frost had died in childbirth. Apparently, Frost was devastated be these losses, or so Parini states, however I was surprised to find how fast he was on the road again, ready and willing to appear in public and talk for hours.
Elinor, Frost's long suffering wife, a university graduate, became a housewife, a mere shadow who moved from pregnancy to pregnancy, from illness to illness, caring for husband and children. Elinor is really a shadow: she has no desires, projects, plans, career of her own. She is there to support her great husband, presumably. Frost thought so, undoubtedly.
Parini defends Frost. He argues that his blatant selfishness and insensitivity are "within the normal range of behaviour" (!!) and he rushes through incidents that are embarrassing to Frost, dismissing them very lightly.
One such incident (the last straw for me) was that very shortly after Elinor's death, although Frost was allegedly devastated and depressed, he proposed to Kay Morrison, his friend (much younger than him, of course) and secretary. Kay was happily married, and Frost was her husband's friend, but this did not deter the great man. Parini promptly explains that "the relationship between Frost and Kay appears to have slipped into the platonic realm rather quickly" and moves on to another subject.
Another aspect of the biography I found unnerving was the financial minutiae. Frost made quite a lot of money, apparently. Parini offers a detail of all the money he earned, how much he was paid for each presentation, for each job, for every single document he sold. Money mattered to Frost, and to Parini as well.
The biography is well researched and it is obvious that Parini admires Frost and sometimes makes too much of an effort to show him in the best possible way. This might be the most balanced biography available, however, I found Frost's behaviour ethically wanting in many aspects and his biographer, too ready to forgive his lapses. I rounded 4 stars, but actually I would rate it 3.5.
I have not read the other biographies, nor will I read them. I like Robert Frost's poetry but I thoroughly dislike his person after reading this book, in spite of Parini's generous efforts to show Frost in a better light.
Naturally, the focus is on Frost, the giant New England poet. The tragic lives of his children are barely mentioned: a son committed suicide, a daughter was committed to an insane asylum, and the only happy daughter Frost had died in childbirth. Apparently, Frost was devastated be these losses, or so Parini states, however I was surprised to find how fast he was on the road again, ready and willing to appear in public and talk for hours.
Elinor, Frost's long suffering wife, a university graduate, became a housewife, a mere shadow who moved from pregnancy to pregnancy, from illness to illness, caring for husband and children. Elinor is really a shadow: she has no desires, projects, plans, career of her own. She is there to support her great husband, presumably. Frost thought so, undoubtedly.
Parini defends Frost. He argues that his blatant selfishness and insensitivity are "within the normal range of behaviour" (!!) and he rushes through incidents that are embarrassing to Frost, dismissing them very lightly.
One such incident (the last straw for me) was that very shortly after Elinor's death, although Frost was allegedly devastated and depressed, he proposed to Kay Morrison, his friend (much younger than him, of course) and secretary. Kay was happily married, and Frost was her husband's friend, but this did not deter the great man. Parini promptly explains that "the relationship between Frost and Kay appears to have slipped into the platonic realm rather quickly" and moves on to another subject.
Another aspect of the biography I found unnerving was the financial minutiae. Frost made quite a lot of money, apparently. Parini offers a detail of all the money he earned, how much he was paid for each presentation, for each job, for every single document he sold. Money mattered to Frost, and to Parini as well.
The biography is well researched and it is obvious that Parini admires Frost and sometimes makes too much of an effort to show him in the best possible way. This might be the most balanced biography available, however, I found Frost's behaviour ethically wanting in many aspects and his biographer, too ready to forgive his lapses. I rounded 4 stars, but actually I would rate it 3.5.
February 20, 2020
You ever read one or two sentences in a book and, no matter how good the book is before or after, the book has been totally obliterated for you? That happened to me with Robert Frost: A Life. Sure, it's well-researched and took years to write, but it all went to hell when I read a snippet of Frost's letter to a friend, which said something like this:
"My son's mongrel gave birth. Now he has eight puppies to drown. I could never own a bitch."
Drowning puppies?
The "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" guy condones drowning puppies?!?!
There is no further explanation of this remark in the book. So, I do not know if Frost himself ever drowned puppies or if these puppies somehow got a last-minute reprieve. I do not care that drowning kittens and puppies were considered normal at the time. Wrong is wrong.
Parini's goal with this biography was to make Frost into a much nicer guy than his previous biographers did. Well, he failed. If he allowed his son to drown puppies, then the guy was a monster.
And this ruins every single Robert Frost poem I've ever read.
"My son's mongrel gave birth. Now he has eight puppies to drown. I could never own a bitch."
Drowning puppies?
The "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" guy condones drowning puppies?!?!
There is no further explanation of this remark in the book. So, I do not know if Frost himself ever drowned puppies or if these puppies somehow got a last-minute reprieve. I do not care that drowning kittens and puppies were considered normal at the time. Wrong is wrong.
Parini's goal with this biography was to make Frost into a much nicer guy than his previous biographers did. Well, he failed. If he allowed his son to drown puppies, then the guy was a monster.
And this ruins every single Robert Frost poem I've ever read.
January 6, 2024
An excellent biography of Frost. I think one of the greatest strengths of the text is Parini’s exploration and interpretation of key passages of poems from throughout Frost’s life. For added value, read it with a copy of Frost’s collected works next to you.
April 24, 2025
Parini manages that delicate balance that makes for a wonderful biography: rendering the subject human and approachable, while retaining the reverence and retrospective hint of mythology of the figure without being too fawning.
Parini paints both Frost’s public persona, and wonderfully describes how it came to be shaped, as well as some quite educated guesses (which is all any of us can do) about the real person underneath the mask.
As Parini is himself a poet, he is able to read a bit of Frost’s mind into his poetry; I’ll admit that my least favorite part of Parini’s biography was his analysis of some of Frost’s poems, but thankfully he does this sparingly, spending most of his ink on understanding Frost’s life.
I had no idea that Frost had so much darkness and sickness throughout his life — it is a wonder that it shaped such gorgeous and meaningful poetry.
It’s especially a joy to read as a fellow New Englander who can recognize many of the places and motifs that pervaded Frost’s poetry.
Parini paints both Frost’s public persona, and wonderfully describes how it came to be shaped, as well as some quite educated guesses (which is all any of us can do) about the real person underneath the mask.
As Parini is himself a poet, he is able to read a bit of Frost’s mind into his poetry; I’ll admit that my least favorite part of Parini’s biography was his analysis of some of Frost’s poems, but thankfully he does this sparingly, spending most of his ink on understanding Frost’s life.
I had no idea that Frost had so much darkness and sickness throughout his life — it is a wonder that it shaped such gorgeous and meaningful poetry.
It’s especially a joy to read as a fellow New Englander who can recognize many of the places and motifs that pervaded Frost’s poetry.
August 29, 2023
Jay Parini's memoir about Borges has been sitting on my to-read table for over a year. I am so excited to read it, but a trip to Bread Loaf, where the ghost of Robert Frost haunts the hills, sent me to this book before the memoir. I had forgotten how much I love reading biography. When I was young, it was my favorite genre. This is one of the best I have read. Measured and thought-provoking, it was the compelling analyses of the poems that had me reading this late into the night. I could not put the book down and read the entire thing in two long, lingering sessions.
The book was especially brilliant about the sense of sound- a concept I first heard last week at Bread Loaf.
Who knew that this poet that is so fixed in our imagination with New England, was born in San Francisco. His life never really settled down either. Most people associate him with Ripton Vermont and New Hampshire, and yet he was constantly on the move --even loving to buy and sell homes. A farmer of sorts, he loved long walks and the land. He also was not the curmudgeon I had imagined, welcoming students to his cabin and talking their ears off well into the night.
My favorite chapter was the one on his trip to Russia. I also loved the chapter on his three years in England before the war.
Some quotes:
"Frost was in high spirits, meditating on poetry: “Every poem has its own little tune,” he said. “That’s the way it comes to me, as a tune. You got to know how to do that, say it so you get the tune, too. Rhyme. You can’t do it without that. Most of the time. You got to know how to take care of the rhyme.”"
"Reeve thought that Frost “seemed to feel out of things” when several Russians began to sing the praises of Akhmatova. He tried to rescue the situation by praising Frost, and made remarks meant to draw attention his way. But the old poet turned on him, furious: “No more of that, none of that, you cut that out,” he snapped. When Reeve tried to explain what he meant, Frost hushed him, saying, “Cut it out.” Frost declined to recite any poems, but encouraged Akhmatova to do so, and she offered two poems in Russian; her nobility and passion communicated itself, even though Frost did not understand what she was saying. He thanked her sincerely. “It’s very musical,” he said. “You can hear the music in it. It’s very good.”
Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.
““The sound of sense” was an idea he would develop carefully in the coming year and return to throughout his life. Its chief formulation occurs in a letter to Bartlett written the following February: I give you a new definition of sentence: A sentence is a sound in itself on which other sounds called words may be strung. You may string words together without a sentence-sound to string them on just as you may tie clothes together by the sleeves and stretch them without a clothes line between two trees, but—it is bad for the clothes. The number of words you may string on one sentence-sound is not fixed but there is always danger of over loading. The sentence-sounds are very definite entities. (This is no literary mysticism I am preaching.) They are as definite as words. It is not impossible that they could be collected in a book though I don’t at present see on what system they would be catalogued. They are apprehended by the ear. They are gathered by the ear from the vernacular and brought into books. Many of them are already familiar to us in books. I think no writer invents them. The most original writer only catches them fresh from talk, where they grow spontaneously. 3 Frost continues for several pages, culminating in the “greatest test” of a piece of prose or a poem: “You listen for the sentence sounds. If you find some of those not bookish, caught fresh from the mouths of people, some of them striking, all of them definite and recognizable, so recognizable that with a little trouble you can place them and even name them, you know you have found a writer.” He elaborates in another letter to Sidney Cox: “Just so many sentence sounds belong to a man as just so many vocal runs belong to one kind of bird. We come into the world with them and create none of them.”
The book was especially brilliant about the sense of sound- a concept I first heard last week at Bread Loaf.
Who knew that this poet that is so fixed in our imagination with New England, was born in San Francisco. His life never really settled down either. Most people associate him with Ripton Vermont and New Hampshire, and yet he was constantly on the move --even loving to buy and sell homes. A farmer of sorts, he loved long walks and the land. He also was not the curmudgeon I had imagined, welcoming students to his cabin and talking their ears off well into the night.
My favorite chapter was the one on his trip to Russia. I also loved the chapter on his three years in England before the war.
Some quotes:
"Frost was in high spirits, meditating on poetry: “Every poem has its own little tune,” he said. “That’s the way it comes to me, as a tune. You got to know how to do that, say it so you get the tune, too. Rhyme. You can’t do it without that. Most of the time. You got to know how to take care of the rhyme.”"
"Reeve thought that Frost “seemed to feel out of things” when several Russians began to sing the praises of Akhmatova. He tried to rescue the situation by praising Frost, and made remarks meant to draw attention his way. But the old poet turned on him, furious: “No more of that, none of that, you cut that out,” he snapped. When Reeve tried to explain what he meant, Frost hushed him, saying, “Cut it out.” Frost declined to recite any poems, but encouraged Akhmatova to do so, and she offered two poems in Russian; her nobility and passion communicated itself, even though Frost did not understand what she was saying. He thanked her sincerely. “It’s very musical,” he said. “You can hear the music in it. It’s very good.”
Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.
““The sound of sense” was an idea he would develop carefully in the coming year and return to throughout his life. Its chief formulation occurs in a letter to Bartlett written the following February: I give you a new definition of sentence: A sentence is a sound in itself on which other sounds called words may be strung. You may string words together without a sentence-sound to string them on just as you may tie clothes together by the sleeves and stretch them without a clothes line between two trees, but—it is bad for the clothes. The number of words you may string on one sentence-sound is not fixed but there is always danger of over loading. The sentence-sounds are very definite entities. (This is no literary mysticism I am preaching.) They are as definite as words. It is not impossible that they could be collected in a book though I don’t at present see on what system they would be catalogued. They are apprehended by the ear. They are gathered by the ear from the vernacular and brought into books. Many of them are already familiar to us in books. I think no writer invents them. The most original writer only catches them fresh from talk, where they grow spontaneously. 3 Frost continues for several pages, culminating in the “greatest test” of a piece of prose or a poem: “You listen for the sentence sounds. If you find some of those not bookish, caught fresh from the mouths of people, some of them striking, all of them definite and recognizable, so recognizable that with a little trouble you can place them and even name them, you know you have found a writer.” He elaborates in another letter to Sidney Cox: “Just so many sentence sounds belong to a man as just so many vocal runs belong to one kind of bird. We come into the world with them and create none of them.”
Want to read
February 21, 2021****************************
*The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year 3 stars
*Borges and Me TBR
*Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal TBR
*Robert Frost: A Life TBR
*One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner TBR
*The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year 3 stars
*Borges and Me TBR
*Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal TBR
*Robert Frost: A Life TBR
*One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner TBR
December 31, 2017
Robert Frost a Life, by Jay Parini is a an extremely well researched biography of this great American poet. Chronologically, almost daily when necessary, the author gives a comprehensive account of what Frost did, read, studied ,saw and felt; who he met and his interactions with them; where he lived and worked; and how all of his experiences contributed to the development of each of his poems and the progress of his career. If this seems a lot to accomplish, it is, but nevertheless quite accessible to read and gain a fair understanding of the poet as a man, as well as his feelings about his life and his poetry. The book generously supplied relevant portions of those poems in both these regards, as well as sections of letters, speeches, essays by others, and portions of Frost’s notebooks. The book is must for anyone interested this great poet, was reviewed as perhaps the most balanced of the biographies of him to date.
July 28, 2025
Robert Frost: A Life is an engaging and insightful biography of this major American poet, recounting in detail his growth as a writer, his pathbreaking career as a public presenter of his work, and the bright and dark threads in his personal life. Parini counters Lawrance Thompson's depiction of Frost as a monster who tormented his children, writing that on the contrary, Frost was a conscientious husband and father who maintained strong ties to his children long after they left the nest. Unfortunately, Frost also bequeathed to them the tendency toward mental illness that plagued him with depression at times throughout his life. Parini suggests where personal periods of darkness influenced Frost's writings, but he balances that part of the picture with consideration of Frost's philosophical views, the influence on him of his many friendships, and his historical context. The result is a convincing and vivid portrait of this giant of American literature.
October 4, 2017
After reading Randall Jarrell's critical essays on poetry, who encouraged readers to give Robert Frost's poetry a second look, I picked up this biography in a used bookstore. The truth is, Robert Frost's best known poems are not his best poems. He grappled with depression and loss and wrote beautifully about those subjects.
The author's slant is favorable; he depicts Frost as a caring husband, father, and New England "man of the common people" but he also looks at the carefully honed persona that Frost crafted. The interesting parts of the biography focus on the paradoxes: his intellectual endeavors vs the need to farm; need for solitude vs. the need to be and talk with his audience and students; and the public persona vs the private man. Well worth the read if you want to know more about this American icon.
The author's slant is favorable; he depicts Frost as a caring husband, father, and New England "man of the common people" but he also looks at the carefully honed persona that Frost crafted. The interesting parts of the biography focus on the paradoxes: his intellectual endeavors vs the need to farm; need for solitude vs. the need to be and talk with his audience and students; and the public persona vs the private man. Well worth the read if you want to know more about this American icon.
September 27, 2019
An informative bio. The author is an Englis Professor and spent a lot of time researching Robert Frost. The value of the book was an insight into the man - what he thought, how he lived and the tragedies of his personal life. His sister, son and one of his daughters had serious mental illness. Frost hiself dealt with depression much of his life.
The book includes more technical analyses of poetry than would be expected in a bio. Those passages can be quickly scanned by a non-technician.
The book includes more technical analyses of poetry than would be expected in a bio. Those passages can be quickly scanned by a non-technician.
June 1, 2020
Probably, the best “biography” I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. Jay Parini’s research was outstanding, and he compiled such in a way that leaves readers with the motivation to learn more. Robert Frost’s life was fascinating and in the process of living, gifted the world a slew of poetry that will withstand the test of time.
July 26, 2023
I finished it! I cant believe after 2 years I have finally finished this beast of a book and as I suspected Robert frost Is a national treasure that should be protected at all costs and I honestly never wished for someone to be my father more, I love this man so much and everytime I read his work I'll remember his brilliant and sad life story
May 1, 2018
Frost is my 22nd cousin (!), so I wanted to learn more about him. This book is very thorough, and very readable. The author dispels some myths set forth by other biographers and really examines Frost's life with a fine-tooth comb, detailing how life events may have affected his poetry.
July 19, 2021
Well researched biography with bright and insightful interpretations of Frost’s poetry. Parini writes that his biography of Robert Frost won’t be the last but I’d bet the family farm that it will be the best.
October 29, 2017
Glad I read Parini's biography Frost to the end. What an extraordinary life, poet and person.
November 12, 2017
An exceptional book. I knew little about Frost save for the famous poems. This is a wonderful exploration of his life and significance.
November 13, 2020
Great read. Frost was a fascinating man and poet. Helps to dispel the erroneous, negativity of the past that surrounds Frost's memory.
Read
May 23, 2021Worth the trip, worth the time, worth revisiting.
January 12, 2022
On a cold winter evening, there is no better companion.
October 18, 2019
I started this a week or two ago and am reading it slowly. savoring the unfolding of Robert Frost's extraordinary talent and success. I like best, so far, how well Parini describes the poet's life and work. I like least some of the literary criticism, so I have been skimming that, reading when I find something intriguing about his interpretations and skimming faster when I prefer my own take. I highly recommend this book to any Frost fans. My sister-in-law lent me this copy, which is inscribed by the author, a fellow student of my s-i-l at Middlebury when Frost was there.
*******
Finished the book. Very well done; I recommend it to anybody who wants to better understand this poet's life and work.
*******
Finished the book. Very well done; I recommend it to anybody who wants to better understand this poet's life and work.
Read
November 5, 2010"The contradictions of his life remain stunning. He was a loner who liked company; a poet of isolation who sought 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." (446) ... "He was a fierce anticommunist who embraced Nikita Khrushchev personally, calling him 'a great man.' As Katherine Kearns has said, Frost's 'near-phobic distaste for systems . . . exceeds even the most potent American individualism.' In a sense, Frost made himself a representative American by amplifying his individuality, by finding a voice for Everyman in the persona of the Lone Striker. By making himself eccentric, he found the center." (447)
September 4, 2011
"Robert Frost - A Life" is one of the best biographies I have read. It addresses, in a very balanced way, the historical facts in Frost's life, the important occurrences, the strong influences on him and his poetry, and his poetry itself--Parini analyzes many of Frost's best poems, but never so as to make this a work of literary criticism as opposed to a complete biography. The book is well-written and never drags. Parini manages to pull together the disparate strands of Frost's highly complex character into a seamless whole.
February 27, 2009
What is the measure of a man?
How well he stands up to uncertainty, doubt, and even failure.
How well he weathers the storms of life.
How well he considers his neighbor as well as himself within the common bonds of human suffering.
How well he overcomes his fear of darkness and uncertainty and how uncrippled by his own inadequacies he remains.
By being the best man he knows how to be.
How well he stands up to uncertainty, doubt, and even failure.
How well he weathers the storms of life.
How well he considers his neighbor as well as himself within the common bonds of human suffering.
How well he overcomes his fear of darkness and uncertainty and how uncrippled by his own inadequacies he remains.
By being the best man he knows how to be.
Read
January 18, 2014"Never again would the birds' song be the same./And to do this to the birds was why she came."
When Maurice Thompson first read "My Butterfly" he wrote he recognized "an appeal to sympathy lying deep in one's sources of tenderness" and "thought of all the probable disappointment in store for young Frost all his life."
The whisper of a scythe.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in the rain--and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light
When Maurice Thompson first read "My Butterfly" he wrote he recognized "an appeal to sympathy lying deep in one's sources of tenderness" and "thought of all the probable disappointment in store for young Frost all his life."
The whisper of a scythe.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in the rain--and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light
December 8, 2009
Parini has written a very scholarly yet readable biography of Robert Frost. The work describes Frost's life covering 2-5 years in each chapter. But the joy of this book is that Parini includes analysis of Frost's poetry. His insights into the man and his poems are enlightening. This is a very well documented and researched book which is a joy to read.
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