The Robert Frost Reader: Poetry and Prose

by Robert Frost, Edward Connery Lathem (Editor), Lawrance Thompson (Editor)

Robert Frost was the most emblematically American of poets, a forthright advocate of both the art and craft of verse who was recognized and cherished as few other poets have ever been. This reader offers students and scholars a plethora of his speeches, interviews, correspondence, one-act plays, and other materials, as well as lengthy selections from all of Frost's books of verse. Though many have been drawn to his seemingly old-fashioned simplicity, this wide-ranging reader in fact reveals that Frost's work was often dark or ironic in tone―and always subtle and complex.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Short Stories, Essays

544 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

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

[Neha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read select parts of this book about a hundred times but I just sat and went through the whole thing and made my little annotations and it made me super happy! good way to spend my day

[Aether Real · Rating 3 out of 5]

To clarify my rating, this is a five star book. There is no doubt of that. It's a great book, but poetry is an art and as such is subjective from person to person. This just wasn't my cup of tea. I loved a handful of the poems in this book, so much so that I would read this again only for those handful of poems, but I had little to no interest in most of this book. It was even a bit hard for me to get through because of this. Wonderful artist/writer, but this book won't go into my collection. Sorry, Frost.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really love Robert Frost. He's so easy to read.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides a great insight not only into the collection of poetry of Robert Frost, but also into his developing personality and perspective. Robert starts out very insecure about his poetry and his continued source of inspiration, and then blossoms with confidence by asserting his own personality and views. His last poem and letter both question the meaning of life and affirm his desire to never let life go.

"...there's one thing I shan't write in the past, present, or future, and that is glad mad stuff or mad glad stuff. The conviction closes in on me that I was cast for gloom as the sparks fly upward, I was about to say: I am of deep shadow all compact like onion within onion and the savor of me is oil of tears...But I have not laughed. No man can tell you the sound or the way of my laughter."

"I say I have the right to tell anything-to talk about anything I am smart enough to find out about. Second, I am free to talk about anything I am deep enough to understand, and third, I am free to talk about anything I have the ability to talk about. The limitations on my freedom, you see, are more in myself than anywhere else."

Some of my favorite poems follow, though this book only contains a selection of poems from each publication, and I must get a hold of the full set of poems:
- October
- Reluctance
- The fear
- Birches
"...I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again..."
- A star in a stoneboat
- Wild grapes
"...I had not learned to let go with the hands,
As still I have not learned to with the heart,
And have no wish to with the heart-nor need,
That I can see. The mind is not the heart.
I may yet live as I know others live,
To wish in vain to let go with the mind-
Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells me
That I need learn to let go with the heart."
- Nothing gold can stay
- The onset
- The lockless door
- A passing glimpse
- West-running brook
- The bear
- Carpe Diem
"Age saw two quiet children
Go loving by at twilight,
He knew not whether homeward,
Or outward from the village,
Or (chimes were ringing) churchward.
He waited (they were strangers)
Till they were out of hearing
To bod them both be happy.
"Be happy, happy, happy,
And seize the day of pleasure."
The age-long theme is Age's.
'Twas Age imposed on poems
Their gather-roses burden
To warn against the danger
That overtaken lovers
From being overflooded
With happiness should have it
And yet not know they have it
But bid life seize the present?
It lives less in the present
Than in the future always,
And less in both together
Than in the past. The present
Is too much for the senses,
Too crowding, too confusing
Too present to imagine."
- Escapist - Never
"He is no fugitive-escaped, escaping.
No one has seen him stumble looking back.
His fear is not behind him but beside him
On either hand to make his course perhaps
A crooked straightness yet no less a straightness.
He runs face forward. He is a pursuer.
He seeks a seeker who in his turn seeks
Another still, lost far into the distance.
Any who seek him seek in him the seeker.
His life is a pursuit of a pursuit forever.
It is the future that creates his present.
All is an interminable chain of longing."
- Forgive, O Lord
"Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me."

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frost is a master poet. Enough said.

[Janice · Rating 5 out of 5]

from Chard DeNiord's presentation Oct. 2012

[Corinne Drollette · Rating 5 out of 5]

In beautiful, accessible language, Frost taps into just about every emotion known to humanity. I love the way his poems share deep insights using simple vivid images.

[Angeline Walsh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just...I can't get into Robert Frost. Sorry.