Robert+Frost

As a group, you will give a brief bio of the poet, a summary of his major themes and an analysis of his basic style. Each of you will then post an analysis of an individual poem on a designated discussion board. Please post the poem itself also.

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Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in California. After his father, William, died in 1885, Frost and his mother moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts. In 1895, he married Elinor White, with whom he was co-valedictorian. He attended Dartmouth College for a grand total of seven weeks before dropping out to write for a newspaper and teach. He enrolled at Harvard from 1897-1899, hoping to learn under William James, but instead was taught by George Santayana. Frost did not earn a degree, partly because he was unwilling to undergo the academic rigor that Harvard required.

Frost was financially struggling until his grandfather William Sr. gave him a farm in Derry. He spent twelve years on this farm, where he wrote many of his most famous works. By 1912 he wanted to devote his life to writing and moved to England where he could do so. In England he was published for the first time with his works //A Boy's Will// and //North of Boston//. By 1915 World War I was declared, and he returned to New Hampshire for safety. At this point his wife and daughter Marjorie died, after two children had already died in infancy.

This did not stop Frost from being successful; his book //Mountain Interval// contained some of his most popular works, and Amherst College created the position of poet-in-residence for him. He was soon in high demand as a speaker at colleges and on television shows. He won a Pulitzer Prize for //New Hampshire//, released in 1923 and continued writing until his death in 1963.

Style/Subjects

Frost's speaker in most of his poems is a wise country farmer. His voice is generally friendly and simple, hiding cleverness and ironic undertones. However Frost occasionally employs a more emotionally troubled voice in poems like "Fire and Ice" and "Acquainted with the Night."

Frost preferred traditional poetic forms, and thanks to his knowledge of Latin, he knew many of them. He uses typical rhymes and meters which contrast with his conversational, informal style. His phrases are direct, and he is not above using colloquialisms.

His poems generally flow very smoothly from object through metaphor to idea. He uses metaphors sparingly but powerfully. His subjects are very frequently aspects of nature or farming. He uses these subjects to discuss life and death, survival, responsibility, nature and humanity. He frequently tackles the ideas of isolation and the difficulty of understanding existence, the ambiguity of nature and darker topics like entropy and extinction.