A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost

by Robert Frost, Ken Mondschein (Introduction)

The early works of beloved poet Robert Frost, collected in one volume.

The poetry of Robert Frost is praised for its realistic depiction of rural life in New England during the early twentieth century, as well as for its examination of social and philosophical issues. Through the use of American idiom and free verse, Frost produced many enduring poems that remain popular with modern readers.  A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost  contains all the poems from his first four published   A Boy’s Will  (1913),  North of Boston  (1914),  Mountain Interval  (1916), and  New Hampshire  (1923), including classics such as “The Road Not Taken,” “Fire and Ice,” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” This handsome leather-bound volume is an elegant addition to every poetry lover’s shelf.
 

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction, Collections, Literature

277 pages, Leather Bound

First published January 1, 2019

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

[T.R. Preston]

I see now why this man is so iconic. Many poems in here really blew me away. I must say, though, that I really don't love the overly long ones with dialogue. The existence of those poems keeps me from giving this five stars.

[Katelyn Buxton]

There were a few poems I enjoyed in this collection, but I think, on the whole, Robert Frost’s style of poetry is not my cup of tea.

[Vicky Hunt]

Falling Into Frost

I've felt the first leaves of Autumn crunch underfoot this week. As is like to happen on a fine September morn like this one, I found myself tumbling into the comfort verse of Robert Frost. Why Robert Frost? Why not Robert Frost?! It is not my own decision to love his lines that linger in my heart from childhood's earliest recitals. No, I fell into Frost innocently, influenced by one teacher's 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' and another's following 'The Road Less Traveled.' It was no surprise when I began seeking out Frost's poetry on my own. I came into his lines like a birthright, as did every American child.

While it is true that American schools teach purely American history, as if it were the world; they also teach a love of American literature and poetry. Americans prove to be just as egocentric as the British in that sense. Sadly, it took the British to recognize the greatness of Robert Frost before he was published here in his own country.

Though I've read Frost from many books over the decades, I found this collection of his earliest four books at Barnes & Noble this week in a lovely hardback edition. The print is very easy to read and in a high-quality typeset and binding. I recommend this for anyone who likes poetry.

While I enjoy exploring literature and poetry from around the world, and learning new things... always love learning something new... I will probably find myself re-reading the lines of Frost frequently as the leaves continue to fall and the cold weather approaches. There's always room for comfort-books on a bookshelf.

[Bookbringer]

Dnf @p. 147. I love flowery language and books written in verse, but just realised that poems just aren't my thing.

[SP]

4.3 stars

Very talented poet, his rhymes were so creative and entertaining to read. I love how he has alot of nature themes too. Wonderful

[Daniel Potts]

Coming back home to Frost

This volume brings one back home to those familiar words and scenes Frost created out of the land and sky and seasons of his life, but also brings forth some of his less familiar work. I highly recommend this collection as one to which to return again and again.

[Elizabeth]

3 stars for the content, 4 stars for the actual collection (it’s a beauty of a book), so 3.5 stars overall.

This is my first time diving deep into the works of Robert Frost, and I have to say I admire the diversity of his poetry. The lyrical/pastoral poems were more to my liking overall, so it’s not very surprising that many of my favourites came from A Boy’s Will. However, some of the “monologue/dialogue” poems still resonated with me.

Other than the obvious nature themes, there’s also an overt darkness that shrouds much of Frost’s pieces. Death is a common theme, as is abandonment (sometimes of people, but mostly of places). The abandoned house, in particular, is featured throughout the collection.

Game of Thrones fans will know of Fire and Ice, but should really pay special attention to The Generations of Men.

My favourite poems, in no particular order:

My November Guest
To the Thawing Wind
The Tuft of Flowers
Reluctance
Mending Wall
Blueberries
In a Disused Graveyard
A Brook in the City

“We love the things we love for what they are.”

[Tracy]

This is a handsome volume with gold edging and a ribbon book marker. The print is not too small and the pages are thick. The content is equally appealing, with a wide-ranging selection of poetry by Frost, including his most well known poems. I'll confess I started skipping the really long poems because they were like short stories. In my current poetry habit I only want a short poem or two to start the day.

[Maria]

Curling up with a nice poetry book in the evenings these past few days was incredibly rewarding and relaxing.

I preferred the shorter poems over the longer ones. The longer poems felt more like somewhat rhyming short stories and overall didn’t managed to catch me the way most of the shorter poems did.

[Nancy JS Baker]

Nothing gold can stay.
And miles to go before I sleep.
Such lovely words.

[diagnosed bookaholic]

This book is stunning! Absolutely gorgeous leather cover, gold edged pages, and it has a beautiful blue ribbon bookmark. Robert Frost is a renowned poet, and there are lots of lovely poems in this collection. He has a talent for rhyme, and a way with words. My biggest and only complaint is that about half of this collection is very long “poems” that are more like short stories written in confusing verse.

Genre: Poetry, Classic

“Lovers, forget your love, and list to the love of these, she a window flower, and he a winter breeze.” 9

“Come forth into the storm and rout and be my love in the rain.” 31

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.” 121

[Marie]

Frost is one of the most well-known poets in the world, but I was only familiar with two of his poems: "The Road Not Taken" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." It turns out those were two of his best. The vast majority of poems are like little skits. For example, a husband and wife worry over a visitor trying to get home in a storm, and he does, and then they're like, "well, that was an interesting night." And that's the poem. That just doesn't work for me. Cute story, but I was expecting something more meaningful and enduring. Maybe Frost is a victim of his most famous poems, which don't represent the entirety of his work well.

However, when I got to the last 25 pages, the poems shifted from lengthy quasi-stories about 19th/20th century New Englanders to short odes about nature, and I found those touching and vivid. A mixed bag, but worth it for those final pages.

Note that this is the leather-bound edition, and the cover was beautiful: an engraved scene of birch trees on a snowy hill, with a moon and stars in the background.

[James Elliott]

I'm very conflicted about this review. I wish I could review it higher, but, I just can't.

On one hand, Frost has some absolutely stunning poetry. On the other hand there are a lot of works that perhaps worked during the time they were written, but that I personally struggle to connect with in this book. They are slice of life poems, that, while are fascinating windows into the past, are not particularly engaging poems for the present.

Is this worth a read? Absolutely, but you may need to slog through pages and pages of the later to get to the stuff worth your time.

[Samantha]

I think most people think they know what they’re getting when they pick up a book of poems by Robert Frost. I certainly did, but I was mostly wrong. There were certainly some haunting nature poems, but mostly poems that sound like a dialogue or conversation overheard by fly on the wall who jumped into the middle with no context. No rhyme or rhythm. More like a play but with nothing designate the characters. I was surprised and intrigued.

[Preston Schaap]

So much of Frosts poetry is beautiful and spellbinding, but you have to weed through pages of rambling narratives with no coherency in order to find the diamonds in the rough, perhaps this shows my lack of understanding with some of his work, but personally, it was hard to read at times. This still doesn’t take away from the fact that this man has written some of my most favorite poems of all time. When he cooks, he cooks.

[Caro D.]

“These woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”

rip robert frost, you would've been a hozier and lord huron fangirl with me.
will be coming back to this read in the summer for when I'm missing the feeling of fall and winter.

[Jenny Mac]

3.75 stars

This was a great selection of Robert Frost poems that still resonate even today. I was not a huge fan of the longer poems that contained more dialogue. Here were some of my favorites from the collection:

My November Guest
Waiting (A Field at Dusk)
A Line-Storm Song
Mending Wall
The Road Not Taken
Birches
Not to Keep
Snow Dust
Maple

[Ariel]

Beautiful poetry, and I loved the introduction.

My favorite poems: A Line-Storm Song, The Wood-Pile, Good Hours, The Road Not Taken, The Sound of the Trees, The Star-Splitter, Maple, Fire and Ice, To E.T., Stopping by Woods on Snowy Evening, Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter.

My favorite collection was New Hampshire.

[Phoebe]

Out of 121 poems in this collection, I only marked 14 of them as favourites.

Some of his longer poems were not worth reading. They seemed nonsensical and inconclusive.

But I like that he has variety in his verse and structures. He was very good at observing the smaller things in humanity and in nature and shining a light on them.

[Quinn]

“Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”

[Adam Laughton]

A beautiful collection of Frost's first 4 books of poems, including probably all his most famous ones (Road less travelled, Stopping by woods on a snowy night, Fire and Ice, etc...)

Some are very poignant indeed... enjoyed reading these

[Victoria]

I’ve fallen in love with Frost. He has a simple yet profound way of observing the everyday things in nature that highlights their beauty. There were some poems I didn’t enjoy as much (more his earlier works) but my favorites included Fragmentary Blue, Birches, The Tuft of Flowers.

[Lily Merritt]

I love Robert Frost. He and Sylvia Plath are my favorite poets. This book is filled with beautiful poetry. I loved reading this. My favorite poem of Frosts is Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, I also really like The Hill Wife.

[Devon]

3.5/5. I think that Frost is at his best in his most succinct poems. In fact there are many poems in this volume that are among my favorite poems of any writer and some I have memorized. What brings this down for me is that I find Frost’s more narrative poems to be lacking.

[Anya]

It had its share of stuff I liked and stuff I didn't like. Most of them were alright, others felt like a chore to read and a few seemed like they would've worked better if they were formatted as a short story

[Chad]

These something deeply satisfying about his writing. The best of the best.

[patty]

My favorite method of escapism: Poems about nature and the seemingly mundane <3

[Sue Hunter]

There were so many amazing lines and poems that I ran out of tabs. Made me immersed in nature and human emotion. The Death of the Hired Man & Home Burial were some of my favorites.

[Chris]

A Dust of Snow is a masterful example of using few words to say so much.

[Marin Hawthorne]

24/7 glazer of robert frost thank u