Product Description

During his lifetime, Robert Frost notoriously resisted collecting his prose--going so far as to halt the publication of one prepared compilation and to "lose" the transcripts of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures he delivered at Harvard in 1936. But for all his qualms, Frost conceded to his son that "you can say a lot in prose that verse won't let you say," and that the prose he had written had in fact "made good competition for [his] verse." This volume, the first critical edition of Robert Frost's prose, allows readers and scholars to appreciate the great American author's forays beyond poetry, and to discover in the prose that he did make public--in newspapers, magazines, journals, speeches, and books--the wit, force, and grace that made his poetry famous.

The Collected Prose of Robert Frost offers an extensive and illuminating body of work, ranging from juvenilia--Frost's contributions to his high school Bulletin--to the charming "chicken stories" he wrote as a young family man for The Eastern Poultryman and Farm Poultry, to such famous essays as "The Figure a Poem Makes" and the speeches and contributions to magazines solicited when he had become the Grand Old Man of American letters. Gathered, annotated, and cross-referenced by Mark Richardson, the collection is based on extensive work in archives of Frost's manuscripts. It provides detailed notes on the author's habits of composition and on important textual issues and includes much previously unpublished material. It is a book of boundless appeal and importance, one that should find a home on the bookshelf of anyone interested in Frost.

Product Description
Here in one volume are Robert Frost's first two collections of poetry. A Boy's Will (1913) is the book that introduced readers to Frost's unmistakable poetic voice, and North of Boston (1914) includes two of his most famous poems, "Mending Wall" and "Death of a Hired Man." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Not what I expected
The first half, "A Boy's Will," was better than the second, "North of Boston." ABW are romantic poems, about nature, love, and death, in the grand tradition of Wordsworth et al.They ostensibly follow the couse of a boy's life/coming of age.

The second half, or second book, I didn't like much.Most of the poems are hardly poems at all; they're more like short stories written with line breaks.Some of the stories/poems were interesting, some I just couldn't care about.There were a few more "poemy" poems, like Mending Wall and After Apple Picking, but they're the same poems you find in anthologies, so nothing much gained here.

I would guess that Frost published better books than these later in his career.

The beginnings
Robert Frost came into public view with "A Boy's Will" and "North of Boston," his first short collections of poetry. While Frost's "voice" is a bit unformed in these poems, the rich ponderings of nature and love are never stronger, full of "sun-saturated meadows," melancholy looks at life and death, and pearly streams.

"I should not be withheld but that some day/Into their vastness I should steal away," Frost announces in the first poem of "A Boy's Will." He follows up this statement with everything from eerie story-poems ("Love and a Question") to exultant ("A Prayer in Spring") to melancholy meditations on nature's beauty, love, and broken hearts.

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall," is the first line of one of Frost's more typical poems in "North of Boston," a nuanced work about neighbors rebuilding a wall between them. But then there are poems like "Death of the Hired Man," a long conversation between a man and his wife, about a former worker who has returned home to die. Another is just about a mountain, as told by a farmhand.

Poets take awhile to reach their peak, and Frost was still starting out in these books. That said, it's astounding how good he was even in his first volume of poetry (though at times the rhymes are a little too simple, and the subjects don't vary much). Most striking is Frost's passion -- his enthusiasm, sorrow and thoughts seem to spill off the page.

"A Boy's Will" and "North of Boston" are pretty different, though. The first collection is far less grounded, more ethereal and almost dreamy. Both possess Frost's exquisite phrasing ("A bead of silver water more or less/Strung on your hair won't hurt your summer looks") but the second focuses on more mundane things like hotels, farms and strangers. And more of the poems are long conversations, instead of meditations on nature and life. The first, however, has a poem about a moonlit search for a brook, the God Pan, and the stirring historical poem "In Equal Sacrifice," about Douglas carrying Robert the Bruce's heart to the Holy Land

On an emotional level, the poems are about equal -- "A Boy's Will" is beautifully written, while "North of Boston" is powerful. Some readers might not be thrilled about the conversational poems, which are mostly composed of two people talking in a rather grounded fashion. ("Stark?" he inquired. "No matter for the proof."/"Yes, Stark. And you?"/"I'm Stark." He drew his passport.) But it is quite intriguing to see Frost expanding his poetry and seeing what else he was capable of doing.

"A Boy's Will and North of Boston" encompasses the first two volumes of Robert Frost's classic poetry, and give a look at a poet expanding his talents and finding his unique voice.

Well worth having
Many budget-priced classics are poorly edited, with a forward or introduction that is little more than a token gesture.This edition of Frost's early work, comprising his first two publications, is a notable exception.The introduction by William Pritchard and the afterword by Peter Davison are both first-rate.The poems themselves are very fine and if you read them in sequence they give a real sense of the poet's development.It is also nice that they are in their original forms, including the glosses that Frost later removed.

With such fine editing, and at such a low price, this book is well worth having.

Some great Poems
The book is a collection of poems by Robert Frost. It combines the collections of A Boys Will, and North of Boston. Many of the poems were about nature, and love. I selected the book because I had read Robert Frost before and I liked his style, and I felt I could relate to some of the poems.Most of them had no riming scheme, and were written in sentences, or stanzas. There was one poem about Blueberries that I particularly enjoyed because I like picking them. I also liked it because some of the poems seemed to have a hidden meaning. I thought that Frost wrote discriptive ad imaginable language. I would recommend it to readers that are older than 13.I would also recommend it to readers who like reading about nature. And finally I would recommend it to anyone who has read Robert frost, and enjoyed his work. ... Read more

Product Description
Robert Frost and the Challenge of Darwin gives us a new and compelling portrait of the poet-thinker as a modern Lucretius--moved to examine the questions raised by Darwin, and willing to challenge his readers with the emerging scientific notions of what it meant to be human.
Combining both intellectual history and detailed analysis of Frost's poems, Robert Faggen shows how Frost's reading of Darwin reflected the significance of science in American culture from Emerson and Thoreau, through James and pragmatism. He provides fresh and provocative readings of many of Frost's shorter lyrics and longer pastoral narratives as they illustrate the impact of Darwinian thought on the concept of nature, with particular exploration of man's relationship to other creatures, the conditions of human equality and racial conflict, the impact of gender and sexual differences, and the survival of religion.
The book shows that Frost was neither a pessimist lamenting the uncertainties of the Darwinian worldview, nor a humanist opposing its power. Faggen draws on Frost's unpublished notebooks to reveal a complex thinker who willingly engaged with the difficult moral and epistemological implications of natural science, and showed their consonance with myths and traditions stretching back to Milton, Lucretius, and the Old Testament. Frost emerges as a thinker for whom poetry was not only artistic expression, but also a forum for the trial of ideas and their impact on humanity.
Robert Frost and the Challenge of Darwin provides a deeper understanding not only of Frost and modern poetry, but of the meaning of Darwin in the modern world, the complex interrelations of literature and science, and the history of American thought.
"A forceful, appealing study of the Frost-Darwin relation, which has gone little noted by previous scholars, and a fresh explanation of Frost's ambivalent relation to modernism, which he scorned but also influenced" --William Howarth, Princeton University
Robert Faggen is Associate Professor of Literature, Claremont McKenna College and Adjunct Associate Professor, Claremont Graduate School.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

An insightful study
This book helped me see Frost in a new light, as a thinker grappling with the problems science poses to religion and to poetry. There is an enormous amount of scholarship brought to many poems, and we see the ways Frost thought not only about Darwin but about Lucretius, Milton, James, Bergson, Emerson, and Thoreau. The Frost that emerges is both dark and complex--a subversive and subtle pastoralist. Though the book is written in clear prose with very little jargon, it is a heavy read. But well worth it.

Faggen's Masterful Study
Professor Faggen has written a remarkable book.We might have considered Frost a sentimental, a provincial poet, but in this volume we discover that Frost (far from the potato-hoeing grandpa of our collective memories) is a poet of the first order and among the most challenging of the moderns.Frost's revaluations of the Romantic and the Miltonic myths in Darwinian terms place him as our chief poet of the scientific, the skeptical turn of mind.The evidence amassed for his argument is daunting and Faggen has contributed to our understanding of the place of Darwin--biological and social--in modern poetry.Faggen's individual readings are acute and original.We will from now on see "The Road Not Taken," "The Oven Bird," and "The Need of Being Versed in Country Things," in a different way.We will see them not as melancholy mood poems, but as tough and riddling explorations of human and animal existence.We may now begin to see Frost's place in American literature, and that a high position indeed!We may thank Robert Faggen for deepening our understanding and broadening our view.

An essential, ground-breaking study.
Many books and articles have been written about the poetry of RobertFrost, but this book, astonishingly, makes almost all of them obsolete. Frost's critics have found him haunted by a dark vision but they have beenhard pressed to say exactly what it was. They have struggled to find thereal context of his thinking, but the poems, in spite of many melancholyreadings, have remained elusive.What are these elegant meditations reallyabout? Where does the impetus for these disturbing dramatic monologues andstark dialogues come from?Faggen's brilliantly researched and forcefullywritten book finally tells us the answer: Frost was obsessed with Darwinand his vision of the natural world.He said so many times (though none ofhis critics was willing to listen).And once you have recognized thisfact, the grave, witty, tender, and frightful poems acquire a new clarityand force.Frost was no "spiritual drifter," no vague perveyorof "metaphysical terror," as earlier writers have thought, butthe most sophisticated and tough-minded poet of science that modern culturehas produced--the nearest thing we have to a Lucretius.This book takes afigure who has seemed conservative or even backward to his readers andshows him to be the most forward-looking artist of his generation.And itaccomplishes this task with an easy mastery of detail that removes alldoubt."Never again would bird's song be the same," Frostwrote--never the same after reading Darwin, that is, nor will this poem bethe same after reading Faggen.The romantic Frost is dead, and a new Frostis afoot. Some will mourn, some will rejoice at the news, but scholarshipis seldom as conclusive as this and hardly ever as exciting. ... Read more

Product Description
From the publication of his first volume of poetry in 1913 to his participation in the presidential inauguration of John F. Kennedy, Robert Frost and his poetry have epitomized the American affinity for plain speaking, nature, and the land. Now his poetry is accompanied by 65 breathtaking color photographs--grouped by season--that evoke this same tranquil beauty. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Perfectmatch of verse and pictures
According to my trusty and well worn Concise Oxford Dictionary "exquisite" means "of consummate excellence or beauty".I looked the word up because it was the word that came to mind whilstenjoying this work. Much pleasure to return to many familiar poems ofRobert Frost eg MENDING WALL and STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING andto discover unfamiliar gems such as BEYOND WORDS. But the photos too have aclarity and depth and composition not to mention colour which helps thecontemplative richness of Robert Frost's words.And not a human in sight!Especially rewarding work for those moments of repose, of calm, when onewants to escape the hurly burly, the flim flam, the gibbering andbustle,and drift, dissolving into the natural world.But, returning to theworld of commerce,I can tell you this book is a bargain.

Perhaps the best color photography ever!
I have a fairly extensive collection of art and fine photography books:This modestly priced book represents the VERY BEST photography one could hope to gaze upon.This collection of photographs is an antidote toalot of the "eye candy"stuff that passes for landscapephotography these days!This book also offers the best argument for color tothose black and white"purists"out there.Do yourself a favor andpurchase an armful of these books(I am assuming you have good friends whoenjoy fine gifts!) ... Read more

Product Description
This file includes: A Boy's Will, Mountain Interval, and North of Boston.According to Wikipedia: "Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Lacks Formatting
This collection, while large, does not reflect the correct indentation for the structured poems - mostly in "A Boy's Will" - which contributes significantly to the rhythm of reading these. If you're interesting in seeing a version of his first book that appears exactly like the original, look for the one put out by Perscribo Publishing (search "Perscribo" in the Kindle store). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Robert Frost's Derry Years in Detail
Fans of Robert Frost's poetry will appreciate the insight into his life at the Derry Farm in New Hampshire. Lawrence Thompson provides his readers with the details of Frost's daily life which so influenced his poetry. Through Thompson's careful chronicling of Frost's activites, we see thepoet as husband, father, neighbor, friend, and farmer. Frost's strugglesand triumphs at the Derry Farm shaped all the poetry that followed thistime in his life. In this book, Lawrence Thompson does justice to thisgreat poet. ... Read more

Product Description
The Library of Classic Poets presents a deluxe boxed set of the most beloved poetry ever written. The set includes Robert Frost (selected poems), Edgar Allan Poe (complete poems), Carl Sandburg (selected poems), W.B. Yeats (selected poems). These exquisite books feature a ribbon marker and decorative endpapers with a namplate to personalize your edition. ... Read more

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Table of Contents

Customer Reviews (1)

The Only American Poetry eBook You Need
This is a fine anthology of most of America's premier poets. All the classics are in here - Whitman, Dickinson, Frost, Eliot, etc. The ebook's greatest non-literary asset, though, is its affordability. I highly recommend this ebook to any avid reader of poetry, students, teachers, or just those curious about a succinct overview of American poetics. All in all, you can trust that you're absorbing only the best of the best. It's delightful to see how strong American poetic tradition is: at turns dynamic, expansive, precise, experimental, and rapturous. ... Read more

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A collection of poetry from Robert Frost, including Birches, The Sound of Trees, The Smile, Snow, Meeting and Passing, and Putting in the Seed. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Sexual Overtones in Birches
It's interesting that a seemingly simple poem about climbing birch trees should have so many interpretations.The following lines are often described as containing distinct sexual imagery.I had my doubts about this at first, but I suspect Frost might have been toying a bit with Freud here because there are definitely overt sexual overtones:
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. ... Read more

Product Description
GradeSaver(TM) ClassicNotes are the most comprehensive study guides on the market, written by Harvard students for students! Longer, with more detailed summary and analysis sections and sample essays, ClassicNotes are the best choice for advanced students and educators.The Poetry of Robert Frost note includes:* A biography of Robert Frost* An in-depth chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis* A short summary* A character list and related descriptions* A list of themes* A glossary* Historical context* Two academic essays (if available)* 100 quiz questions to improve test taking skills! ... Read more

Product Description
Offering a radical new interpretation of the life of Robert Frost, an incisive biography of the great poet chronicles Frost's private life, including a long-time romance with his secretary, his work, and his influence on modern poetry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

A review from Ardsley, PA
September 5, 2007
Ardsley, PA

The audio version of this biography accompanied me to work.

I have been a lifelong fan of Robert Frost's poetry, but never knew much about the man.This book gave me an excellent look into Robert Frost's life.I must admit now that I like Robert Frost's poetry far more than him.

Mr. Meyers does a very good job examining the many influences in Frost's life and gives numerous examples of how they are reflected in his poetry.(I wish it told me a bit about who Brad McLaughlin was ... see Starsplitter.)

It is hard for me to reconcile the picture I had of Robert Frost before I read this biography with the more accurate picture I now have of who this great poet was.I would recommend this biography to anyone familiar with Robert Frost's work who is interested as I was in knowing more about the man.However, I would warn you to be prepared to be somewhat let down by the time you finish this biography.

Finally, regardless of Robert Frost, the man, his poetry has a special place in my heart and has accompanied me on many a walk in the woods.Although this biography gives me an unflattering view of Frost, it does not detract from the joy I derive from his wonderful work.I recommend you read this biography to learn more about Robert Frost and that you read Robert Frost's Poetry to learn more about yourself and this fascinating world in which we live.

Cordially,
Joe Rooney

"To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay." ... Awesome!

All Kinds Of Grief Shall Arrive
Jeffrey Meyers' Robert Frost: A Biography is a thorough, if disjointed, episodic, and often uncomfortably apologetic account of the poet's tumultuous and psychically violent life. While the broad American public continues to lionize Frost and his collected verse, Meyers' volume reveals that there was little to admire in the individual man (a list of character traits in the index includes, among others, "accident-prone," "competitive," "domineering," "egotistic," "fears insanity," "hears voices," "hypersensitive," "insecure," "jealous," "puritanical," "restless," "self-promoting," "temperamental," "tendency to gossip," "uses illness to escape responsibility," and "vanity.")At one extreme, neurotic personalities take their illnesses out on themselves; the aggressively competitive Frost fell into the opposite camp, so that it was his family and intimate friends who suffered primarily, and often fatally, from the grossly irresponsible attitude he adopted towards his own pathology.

Both of Frost's parents, as well as his only sibling, were physically and mentally unstable: "bad blood" clearly ran freely in the family's veins. Emotionally smothered by and dependent upon his "terribly queer" mother, the young Frost was equally at the mercy of his alcoholic, brutal, and vindictive father. Both parents died relatively young after lives of dissolution and extreme hardship.

The circumstances of Frost's youth set the course for his adult existence: year after year, decade after long decade, the poet replicated his fundamental "family romance" and thus found himself surrounded by, and indeed, further afflicting, a variety of tragically disturbed people and families. Generational patterns of mental instability and violent "accidents" were the norm, not the exception, in the lives of the people Frost embraced. Amazingly, the fatalistic and cowardly Frost never became fully conscious of the destructive role he played in the lives of those closest to him. Nor did he learn how to master himself or take healthy control over the calamitous events of his personal life. Tellingly, the poet openly mocked anyone who sought out professional psychological help, which he strenuously avoided receiving himself.

No single event illustrates Frost's grandiose immaturity and reckless disregard for the lives and emotional health of his family more blatantly than the episode in which Frost woke his six year old daughter Lesley in the middle of night, escorted her downstairs where his sobbing wife was waiting, and, pointing a gun at himself and then at his spouse, told her, "Take your choice. Before morning, one of us will be dead!" Perhaps understandably, three decades later, Frost's only son, Carol, 38, committed suicide in front of his own small son under identical circumstances.

Frost's children were raised in isolation on various New England farms and schooled at home; they grew up in a constricted environment dominated by their severe, tyrannical father and exhausted, physically stricken, and ineffectual mother. With the exception of Lesley, Meyers fails to communicate the children's side of their stories to the reader. The author's intermittent presentation of Frost as a loving father who spent much of his free time nurturing his children falls flat.

Frost survived into his 89th year as a wealthy, respected, and world-renowned poet who lunched with American presidents and honored foreign dignitaries, including Nikita Khrushchev, with his presence. It is more than interesting to note that, like an engine of destruction in the mythological guise of a respectable patriarch, Frost's health grew more robust as he aged and as his wife, Elinor ("rather silent, sad and dour" even before her marriage to Frost), and family withered, became severely mentally ill (both Carol and daughter Irma suffered some kind of psychosis; in her 45th year, Irma was committed "as a hopeless case to a hospital for the insane," as was Frost's sister, Jeanie), or otherwise died young (favorite daughter Marjorie at 29).Only Lesley, who Meyers unaccountably refers to as a "harsh and sinewy old harridan" in later life, survived him.

Meyers provides a detailed account of Frost's friendships with other famous poets, including Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Edward Thomas, William Butler Yeats, Carl Sandburg, and Robert Lowell. His analysis of Frost's work is sound if not always persuasive; his evaluation of the influence of Thomas Hardy's poetry on Frost's feels particularly strained. Meyers' discussion of Frost's classic "The Road Not Taken" in conjunction with one of the poet's letters includes this incomprehensible sentence: "The words "lonely cross-roads," "converged" and neither "much traveled" in the letter become "Two roads diverged" and "less traveled by" at the beginning and end of the poem, and the inevitability of "converged" turns into the perplexity of "diverged."

Meyers also makes a blatant error when attributing an Irish peasant's narrative about capturing and living for several weeks with a fairy, which appears in Lady Gregory's Visions & Beliefs in the West of Ireland (1920), to Yeats himself. Yeats accompanied and assisted Lady Gregory in her field work for the book, but the narrative in question was clearly not his own, as any reader Gregory's book, which is still in print, can see (the memorate is attributed to "an old man, Kelleher," and his wife). Whether Meyers is repeating a mistake that Frost made concerning the subject, or is making the mistake himself, is impossible to discern from the text, as no source is provided. Considering the extraordinary nature of the claim, Meyers' inaccuracy is difficult to overlook.

Meyers also adopts Frost's biased image of competitor Carl Sandburg, who appears throughout the book as manipulative pseudo-bumpkin perpetually strumming his "geetar" for a gullible public.

Frost placed his poetical ambition and personal fame ahead of everything else in his life, a situation for which his family and loved ones paid dearly, and for which Elinor never forgave him. Ultimately, Meyers' biography is a casebook example of how the human suffering of others can be the price paid for respectability as well as for great art.

A REVIEW, FROM SOMEWHERE NORTH OF BOSTON...
This is a solid, workmanlike biography of Robert Frost. It will probably appeal more to the reader who wants to know about Frost the man as opposed to the reader who is more interested in the poetry. There are some excerpts from the poetry but not a lot, and very little analysis. Probably the best thing about the book is the balanced attitude Mr. Meyers takes towards the poet. The author doesn't gloss over Frost's faults, but doesn't demonize him either. Yes, Frost had a tremendous ego. (Show me an artistic person that doesn't!) He loved to receive praise. He "collected" honorary degrees. Towards the end of his life he made it clear that he wanted degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, so that he could equal the achievement of Longfellow and James Russell Lowell. He was famous enough and knew enough of the "right" people that he was able to get what he wanted. He was extremely competitive and made nasty comments about other poets who he perceived to be a "threat", both in terms of popularity and talent- such as Carl Sandburg, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. Frost made fun of Sandburg's self-created "folksy" persona- playing his "geetar" and combing his long, white hair over his eyes. But Mr. Meyers makes clear that Frost wasn't alone in his competitiveness. Though Sandburg was apparently a very nice fellow, Eliot and Pound had plenty of nasty things to say about Frost and other poets as well. Where Mr. Meyers is most sympathetic is in discussing Frost's relationship with his family. In the past, Frost has been portrayed as a selfish "monster" who ignored his wife and children and caused their unhappiness, mental problems and, in the case of Frost's son Carol, a suicide. It seems clear that mental illness ran in Frost's family, going back at least to his father and mother. Frost heard "voices" in his youth and they came back in times of severe stress, such as right after Frost's wife Elinor died in 1938. Frost had an unnatural fear of the dark and apparently suffered from some degree of depression. He managed to overcome these problems and to live a long, creative life. He did the best he could to be a good husband and father. He remained faithful to his wife despite the temptation of female students "throwing" themselves at him. (After all, even in middle-age, he was a handsome man, as well as being charismatic, artistic and famous.) He tried to be emotionally present for his children, giving advice (if also at times trying to control them) and he was always generous with money. Again, this book is strong on Frost's personal life. But it is a bit weak on analyzing the poetry and it covers Frost's teaching career in too cursory a manner, "flitting" about from place to place too quickly. Some of this is inherent in Mr. Meyers' decision to write a relatively brief biography. He tries to cover in 350 pages the personal life and career of a man who lived to be 88 years old, and who remained creative for approximately 70 of those years. Mr. Meyers had to make choices about what to include and what to leave out and other things had to be compressed. Unfortunately, it shows. This book is not the definitive biography of Frost. That remains to be written. But it is a good introduction, a book that succeeds in being fair-minded and will leave you wanting to know more about the man and the poetry.

Weak biography
Disappointly poorly done.Statements made without support, poorly written, contributes little if anything new to one's understanding of the man or his work.

Robert Frost and the Barrier of Silence
In spite of the barrier of silence choking it, the vitality of American identity and consciousness continues to survive, thanks to clues, planted in Robert Frost: a biography, written by Jeffrey Meyers.The first majorhint that America is alive and struggling for breath comes with theaffirmation of the importance of Frost's identity as a native SanFranciscan; the second is the remembrance of Lionel Trilling's valiantattempt in 1985 to put into sharper focus the image of Frost's work and hisreputation.Nevertheless, author Meyers does not develop the latter pointin which Trilling stated that Frost's reputation had been created over amisinterpretation of his work.In fact Trilling's was a major effort toraze the barrier of silence, to state and restate lines of research in thedevelopment and study ofliterature in America from the East Coast to theWest, from Columbia University to the University of California at Berkeley(Lizarraga 1999a y b).In response to criticism both professional andpersonal, published in major literary reviews of the East Coast, Trillingmade a valiant attempt to defend the remarks made on that historicalevening, recording in permanent form by way of the Partisan Review both hisspeech and his will to defend it.Although Meyers describes the reactionof Frost on that evening as one of surprise, the poet was not a stranger tothe effects of the barrier of silence.A letter written in 1929 by Frostto Lincoln MacVeagh (Thompson 1964:362), as well as subsequent events inthe 1930's, not only establish Frost's initial attitude toward 'thesilencers', but also servesas a vindication of Trilling.The letterreads as follows "The first poem I ever wrote (La Noche Triste) was onthe Maya-Toltec-Aztec civilization and there is where my heart still is,while outwardly i profess an interest more or less perfunctory in newEngland.Never mind, I'm lucky to be allowed to write poetry on anythingat all".Actually, this was but a prelude to continuingmanifestations of the relation of poetry, politics, religion andrepression, experienced in 1936, when Frost achieved the publication of anumber of works.Key among them is the booklet titled A Further Range,which includes the poems "The Vindictives 'The Andes"and"The Bearer of Evil Tidings 'The Himalayas"and for which he wonthe Pulitzer Prize, and the booklet entitled from Snow to Snow, which,apparently, was the initial publication of the poem "The Road NotTaken"and which by the end of the Thirties as an integral text hadbeen banished to oblivion by Frost himself.It is here that a concept ofAngloAmerican literature, which rejects the primacy of geography in theformation of consciousness, begins to be formulated; and, timeis divorcedfrom space.This then created a dichotomy in the Americas, centering in the north of america concepts of Angloamerican and Western culture,grounded in language only, as opposed to South and/or Latin Americanliterature in which geographical space and language serve as thecornerstones (Falcon, Huayanca, Lizarraga 1999).If we are to formulate aviable concept of an integrated American culture and education, today wemust face this contradiction , a continuing source of repression and chaos. Focusing on this point,the alert reader becomes aware that the truemeasure of Robert Frost is to be taken by how he dealt with "thesilencers" and the consequences this has had, not only on his ownlife, but also the lives of the rest of us, and not by the shadow of KayMorrison and her unconventional love life of which Frost was but a part. Channeling a force with the strength to do this is not only to "keepat bey the silencers' but also to demolish the barrier of silence, itself,and"breathe free". ... Read more

Product Description
This collection of specially commissioned essays by experts in the field exploreskey dimensions of Robert Frost's poetry and life. Frost remains one of the most memorable and beguiling of modern poets. The essays in this volume enable readers to explore Frost's art and thought, from the controversies of his biography to his subtle reinvention of poetic and metric traditions. This volume will bring fresh perspectives to the poetry of an American master, and its chronology and guide to further reading will prove valuable to scholars and students alike. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Frost as one of the all-time greats
If you agree that Robert Frost was one of the greatest poets in English literary history, and enormously erudite if "elusively complex," then you will love this book unreservedly. I think of Frost more as a melodist, perhaps because I sang Randall Thompson's Frostiana in a chorus shortly after its composition, and because I generally find Frost's poetry more musical than scholarly. Still, there's lots of excellent stuff in this book. Highly recommended. ... Read more

Product Description
First published in 1914, "Mending Wall" is a metaphorical poem written in blank verse, by Robert Frost (1874–1963). The poem appeared as the first selection in Frost's second collection of poetry, North of Boston. In this poem, the poet asks why he and his neighbor must rebuild the stone wall dividing their farms each spring.
Other poems in this collection include Death of a Hired Hand, Home Burial, and The Black Cottage. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Something There Is That Really Loves This Poem!
"Mending Wall" has shown up in high school English textbooks for the last seventy years, but it is a great poem to revisit when you are older.For most of us, the first time we read this poem we saw the old farmer and his statement that "good fences make good neighbors" as just an excuse to never change the old ways.It takes a bit of living to see that any sort of privacy, once lost, is difficult, if not impossible, to recover.Fences and walls might lead to isolation, but too much openness can also lead to problems.
I liked the other poems in this collection, but "The Death of a Hired Hand" still manages to evoke very strong emotions with each reading. ... Read more

Product Description
"A beautiful and richly instructive book, a worthy and welcome sequel to Eileen Simpson's Poets in Their Youth."

Louis S. Auchincloss

An intimately perceptive account, by a poet who knew them all, of the brilliant circle of poets who lived and worked in Boston through the half-decade beginning in 1955. That was the year Peter Davison, coming to Boston as a book editor. was swept up in a world -- in a tumult -- of poetry. He rediscovered his father's old friend Robert Frost. He briefly squired Sylvia Plath. He came to know Robert Lowell (whose poems and private disasters dominated the period) and Adrienne Rich, Stanley Kunitz, Richard Wilbur. Anne Sexton, W. S. Merwin, and others who, closely bound together in friendship or rivalry or both, defined the shape of American poetry at mid-century Through their eves as well as his own, and often in their words, Davison presents a sharply fresh vision of the shift from confidence to a troubled questioning that overtook America -- a transformation that was, in a sense, foreshadowed in the sensibilities, in the writings, sometimes in the lives, of some of our finest poets. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Boston through the lens of its poets
After my wife and I first went to Boston, and before our second trip, I acquired and read this book. On the first trip we found ourselves, one grey afternoon, in the bar at the Ritz Carlton opposite Boston Common, having drinks. It had the atmosphere of something... but what? Now we know that Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton used to also go here for drinks after Robert Lowell's poetry classes. Wouldn't you have loved to have been a fly on the wall for those times.

This book is a fascinating recounting of those times and the many poets in Boston and Cambridge and their various relationships by one who was of that circle. Not a "tell-all", just human. People on their life journey. Interesting formative people. It can guide you on an alternative tour of the city and with a little imagination you can 'see' and feel what went on behind those walls from the time and the people who led one writer, I forget which, to say 'America did not enter the twentieth century until the 1960s.' These are among the formative ones and this is one of the places that led that to happen. You will see Boston differently after. And isn't that what makes any read worthwhile. ... Read more