Poet Biographies

Robert Frost

(1874–1963)

Robert Frost became one of America's most loved poets by finding poetry in the language of everyday speech. His writing often explores the way humans connect with the natural world. By focusing on a single element, such as a fallen nest or a stone wall, Frost reveals connections between daily events and the great themes of life, such as love, loss, and community.

Frost was born in San Francisco, California, in 1874. When he was eleven, Frost's father died and his family moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts, a growing city that was part of New England's textile industry. After graduating from high school, he attended Dartmouth College, but left before the end of his first semester.

Frost then began a series of careers, including farmer, mill worker, newspaper reporter, and teacher. During his spare time, he wrote poetry. In 1894 he sold a poem, "My Butterfly: An Elegy," to a New York literary journal. He dreamed of one day supporting himself as a writer.

In 1895, Frost married Elinor White. She and Frost had been the top students in their high school class—they shared the title of valedictorian. Frost attended Harvard University as a special student between 1897 and 1899, but he never graduated.

Frost and his family lived on a chicken farm in Derry, New Hampshire, which he inherited from his grandfather. He spent the next eleven years as a farmer. Unable to get his poems published, Frost decided to make a drastic move. In 1912, he sold the farm and moved his family to England. He planned to use the money from the farm to support himself while he worked on his writing.

In England, Frost befriended several well-known writers, including Ezra Pound, who favorably reviewed his work. Within two years, he published his first two volumes of poetry, A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914).

With his reputation established, Frost moved back to America in 1915. He purchased a farm in Franconia, New Hampshire, with money from the English and American editions of his books.

Frost soon began to give readings and lectures, and these public performances helped him to overcome his natural shyness. He continued to write, placing poems in literary journals and publishing a third book, Mountain Interval, in 1916. In 1924 he received the Pulitzer Prize for his book New Hampshire.

In public, Frost liked to present himself as a good-natured, folksy farmer who just happened to be a poet. Yet in private, he was a deep thinker. Those who knew him well acknowledged that he was a more complicated person than the humble farmer he shared with the public.

Frost went on to write many volumes of poetry and win many awards, including three more Pulitzer Prizes. In 1960, at the invitation of President John F. Kennedy, he became the first poet to read his work at a presidential inauguration.

In addition to his growing calendar of public readings and lectures, Frost also taught at many colleges, including Amherst, the University of Michigan, Harvard, and Dartmouth.

Frost's poems reached a wide audience. He used traditional verse forms and conversational language to paint vivid portraits of the New England landscape and lifestyle. His poems have an appealing simplicity, yet contain many layers of meaning. Many readers are drawn to Frost's work because he finds poetry in events that seem common, even ordinary.

Another important reason for Frost's success is his thorough involvement in what he writes. He places himself deep inside his poems and shares his emotional world. He once described his goal of passionate honesty by giving this advice to other writers: "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader."

Frost was known as a traditional poet because he favored familiar poetic forms. He did not admire much of the experimental poetry that was written in the twentieth century. In a famous critique of Carl Sandburg, a renowned poet who experimented with free verse, Frost said he'd just as soon play tennis without a net as write free verse.

Still, it is a mistake to view Frost as an entirely conventional poet. He helped to pioneer the use of conversational language in poetry, and his work is filled with complex ideas. Frost clearly achieved what he once claimed to be his life's ambition: to write "a few poems it will be hard to get rid of."

Robert Frost is strongly connected to the landscape of New England, where he spent his youth and much of his adult life. He spent most of his years in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts, though New England is also comprised of Rhode Island and Connecticut. Understanding the characteristics of this region can help readers better understand Frost's work.

Many of Frost's poems focus on the rugged landscape of the northeastern United States. New England winters are long, cold, and snowy; summers are shorter but can be extremely hot. Scientists classify the climate of the region as humid and continental.

The New England landscape reflects the changing seasons. The plentiful forests often contain both evergreen and deciduous trees. During autumn, leaves on deciduous trees turn vibrant colors and then fall. Evergreens do not lose their needles, so during the winter, snow-covered pine trees are a familiar sight to New Englanders.