Robert FrostHis life and Works and an explication of “Desert Places” : Robert FrostHis life and Works and an explication of “Desert Places”
Robert Frost’s Achievements : Robert Frost’s Achievements Towards the end of his life, Robert Frost had achieved the following:
Won Four Pulitzer Prizes for his Poetry in 1924, 1928, 1936, 1942
President John F. Kennedy invited him to recite a poem at his presidential inauguration “Dedication” and “The Gift Outright”
Received 44 honorary degrees and a host of government tributes
Received a Congressional Medal
Appointed as the honorary consultant of the Library of Congress
Traveled on “Good Will” missions to Brazil (1954), Britain (1957) and Greece (1961)
Robert Frost’s Life 1874-1963 : Robert Frost’s Life 1874-1963 Robert lee Frost was born to WILLIAM PRESCOTT FROST and the Scottish born MARGARET ISABELLE MOODIE in California
His father was an alcoholic and was very strict. He died of TUBERCOLOSIS in 1885
Mother was a school teacher and a major influence on his career in poetry
Family moved to ST. LAWRENCE, MASSECHUSSETS in 1885 to live with paternal grandparents due to financial difficulty
In Lawrence, Frost’s mother would read him Shakespeare, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Wordsworth
In school: Very industrious and successful. Played sports and wrote his first poem
Was the editor of the school paper and he met his future wife, Elinor White
Slide 4 : Elinor White and Frost were co-valedictorians in High School, they had made a promise to marry
Frost received a scholarship to study law in Dartmouth University and Elinor enrolled into St. Lawrence University
Frost enjoyed the academics in Dartmouth but hated the campus life
Moved back at the end of the semester; used the excuse that he needed to help his mother control an unruly 8th Grade class
Worked several jobs and settled for as a teacher; began writing poetry
1894: New Work independent published “My Butterfly: An Elegy”; his first published poem
1895: Elinor had avoided Frost when she went to university, after her graduation she agreed to marry him after his persistent pursuit
Son Elliot was born in 1986
Slide 5 : At 23, Frost had one child and another on the way
He enrolled into Harvard as a special student; paid for by his grandfather
He left Harvard in 1899 & returned to Lawrence; suffered from tuberculosis and worried about his mother and pregnant wife
Rented a poultry farm and his son Elliot, then at 3 got “cholera infantum”
1900: Elliot died; Frost believes it was his fault
Poultry farm fails and Elinor suggests buying a 3o acre farm in New Hampshire
Creative years marked with tragedy: Mother’s Death and Grandfather’s death
Wrote between 1900-1911: A Boy’s Will (1913) ,North Of Boston (1914) , Mountain Interval (1916)
His grandfather left him an annuity of $500 and $800 the following year
Slide 6 : Enjoyed his farm life & countryside; discovering the farming lifestyle
Pressure of family made him take a job as school teacher in “Pinkerton Academy” & he resigned 5 years later
September 1912: Moves to England; Elinor supports him “the place to be poor and to write poems, ‘Yes! Let’s go over there and live under a thatch!”
Enjoyed their stay in England even though Frost struggled to have his poetry published
1913: A Boy’s Will is published; discusses the ordinary lives of people in New England
An interview with Ezra Pound led him to meet a number of leading English poets
W. B Yeats mentions that A Boy’s Will made Frost “The best writed in American for sometime”
1913North of Boston published; highly credited
Slide 7 : 1914: Moves back the USA; Henry Holt of New York agrees to publish his work Nationwide
Upon his return he was proclaimed the leading voice of the “New poetry movement”
Appointed Phi Beta Kappa poet at Harvard and elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letter
Began working at Amherst Congenial College
1938: Elinor Dies from heart attack
Frost begins to fall apart; daughter Irma institutionalized, daughter Carol commits suicide & Marjorie dies of puerperal fever
Begins to slow down academic work: sells Amherst home
Attends conference where people are enthralled with his style of performance; Meets Kathleen Morrison
Morrison, a conference director’s wife, becomes his secretary manager
Frost asks Kathleen to marry him
Slide 8 : His last appearance was December 2nd 1962
He was hospitalized for a prostate operation and suffered a severe heart attack and eventually died in January 1963
Frost’s Poetry : Frost’s Poetry Often accused of being “simple” and “artlessness”
He used vernacular speech; “the sound of sense”
“the ear does it. ‘The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader’”
Best part of poetic work is in the sounds created; conversational style
Frost uses “ordinary” words; compares himself to Wordsworth “I have sunk to a diction even Wordsworth kept above”
His poetry was meant not to be just read but said in public gatherings
He would have lectures to “say” his poems, comment on them and on the world in general
His poetry stands apart from Eliot and Pound
Frost explains what matters is listening to the effects on speech & the silences
Slide 10 : Explains that he wanted his poetry not to be “a success with the critical few” but “to get outside to the general reader…”
Poems from New Hampshire focused on: “a bleak outlook on life persuasively emerges from the combination of dramatic tension and nature imagery freigted with ambiguity, Only the will to create form, the poet in effect says, can stave off the nothingness that confronts us as mortal beings”
He was described as “the subtlest and saddest of poets” whose “extraordinary strange poems express an attitude that, at its most extreme, makes pessimism a hopeful evasion”
Frost’s “representation of the terrible actualities of life in a new way” for though “the manifest America of [his] poems may be pastoral, the actual America is tragic”
Eliot describes him “perhaps the most eminent, the most distinguished Anglo-American poet now living,” whose “kind of local feeling in poetry…can go without universality”
Pound: “I know more of farm life than I did before I had read his poems. That means I know more of ‘Life’”.
Desert Places : Desert Places Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fastIn a field I looked into going past,And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,But a few weeds and stubble showing last.The woods around it have it--it is theirs.All animals are smothered in their lairs.I am too absent-spirited to count;The loneliness includes me unawares.And lonely as it is that lonelinessWill be more lonely ere it will be less--A blanker whiteness of benighted snowWith no expression, nothing to express.They cannot scare me with their empty spacesBetween stars--on stars where no human race is.I have it in me so much nearer homeTo scare myself with my own desert places.
Slide 12 : Sources:
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/Maps/poets.htm
www.cliffnotes.com
Slide 13 : Thank You for Listening!