Robert Frost(1874-1963) : Life, Poems & Legacy of the poet

It was a time of dislocation and losses for Frost when his father, stricken by that terrible disease, tuberculosis, died in 1885. Strict orders from his paternal grandfather required the family to move to Lawrence, Massachusetts. Surely, such abrupt changes from wild, untamed west traditions to strict New England customs should have shattered the young Frost. High school attended, graduating from Lawrence High School where he learned in class with Elinor Miriam White a classmate that would become both his muse and the source of his greatest heartaches. This marriage of 1895 soon after Elinor was first turned down so that she could finish her education was a prelude to the pattern of chasing and retreat that would characterize many of Frost’s later entanglements.

Erratic, at times brilliant, was Frost’s academic career. He entered the Dartmouth class of 1892, but after two months withdrew, working for a time as a teacher and shoe cobbler. Then he entered Harvard in 1897 but was dropped again. They were years of misbegotten starts coupled with personal tragedies-the cholera death in 1900 of Frost’s first son, Elliott, was, in the poet’s words, the forfeiture of the beginning of his “family graveyard.” In a growing act of desperation for stability, his grandfather bought him a farm in Derry, New Hampshire in 1900, but he was more gifted at writing about rural life than living it.

In 1912, as they moved from one failing farm to another and when at thirty-eight, Frost’s poetry had failed with American publishers, he gambled radically and opened a venture that would alter literary history. Joining forces with Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats in London circles, he found his artistic voice and finally published A Boy’s Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914). These collections, therefore, radicalized pastoralism by infusing the great carry of vernacular speech and the depth of metaphysical inquiry. In addition, “Mending Wall” and “Home Burial,” both showcase Frost’s uncanny ability to turn what may be rural concerns into a global reflection on human nature.

Returning to America in 1915, Frost suddenly found himself to be famous. Publishers who had earlier rejected his work now clamored to buy it from him. He purchased a farm in Franconia, New Hampshire, but from then on he was spending increasing time at such prestigious institutions as Amherst and the University of Michigan. This period of professional success was darkened by personal catastrophe: his daughter Irma became mentally disturbed, his son Carol committed suicide in 1940, and his beloved Elinor died in 1938. Frost infused his grief into his work-poetry like “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” whose simple surface belies what critic Lionel Trilling defined as “the terrifying universe.”

Frost after that became the unofficial poet-laureate of America, craggy New England features just as identifiable as his verse. Recitation of “The Gift Outright,” by the poet in 1961, at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy-important where the old poet improvised a dedicatory preface-would sizzler in American cultural history. All the while, even as he gave that appearance of being the down-home sage, Frost churned out obscure, complicated poems crammed with existential despair. His last collection In the Clearing (1962), published when he turned 88, bore some of the most philosophically demanding writings he had to offer.

On January 29, 1963, Frost died due to complications of prostate surgery. This poet left behind one of the most paradoxical legacies in American letters. The same poet of “Good fences make good neighbors” is also the author of “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” He was the man who penned those children’s verses like “The Pasture,” and then he wrote the cosmic horror that is called “Design.” I had a quarrel with the world would be perhaps the epitaph that captures all this tension between engagement and alienation that defines his work.

The reputation of Frost is under constant construction, so he couldn’t be defined as merely a poet of regions, nor could he be reduced to a simple chronicler of rural realities, for, by that time, he had become a modernist by homespun receipt, a philosophical poet using New England sceneries as places to grapple with fundamental questions of existence. Just like the man himself, his works contain multitudes. It celebrates simple pleasures but never shrinks back from its darkest truth. Just like Frost himself formulated in “Birches,” that perfect, impossible balance in his poetry between “earth’s the right place for love” and the desire to “get away from earth awhile.“

1. Pastoral – Related to the countryside, rural life, or farming, often associated with simplicity and nature.
2. Mysticism – A belief in attaining spiritual knowledge through intuition, faith, or divine experiences rather than logical reasoning.
3. Dislocation – A state of being displaced or disrupted from a normal position or situation.
4. Paternal – Related to one’s father or father’s side of the family.
5. Erratic – Unpredictable, inconsistent, or lacking a clear pattern.
6. Misbegotten – Poorly conceived or planned; doomed to failure.
7. Desperation – A state of hopelessness leading to extreme actions.
8. Gambled – Took a risky decision in the hope of achieving success.
9. Vernacular – The everyday language or dialect spoken by people in a particular region.
10. Metaphysical – Relating to deep philosophical concepts, especially those about existence, reality, and the nature of the universe.
11. Revolutionized – Drastically changed something in an innovative way.
12. Prestigious – Having a high status, respected, or admired.
13. Marred – Spoiled, damaged, or impaired.
14. Existential – Relating to human existence, purpose, and the struggle of meaning in life.
15. Persona – The outward personality or image that a person presents to others.
16. Sensibilities – A person’s emotional or intellectual responses to something.
17. Backdrop – The background or setting against which events happen.
18. Seamlessly – Smoothly and without noticeable transitions or difficulties.
19. Quarrel – A heated argument or dispute.
20. Encapsulates – Summarizes or expresses the essence of something concisely.