Two biographies of Robert Frost have rekindled my appreciation for the poet and his work.
Frost was roundly proclaimed the greatest man of American letters in the 20th century and one of the greatest of all time. Over the course of six decades, he published eight books of poetry, gave hundreds of lectures and presentations at scores of colleges and universities, and was awarded doctorates and literary awards—including four Pulitzer’s—by the bushel. He was a rock star among college students and aspiring poets and writers, and Adam Plunkett (Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry) and Jay Parini (Robert Frost: A Life) tell his story and explain his poetry as admiring biographers and critics.
Frost was born in California, but, following the death of his father, his mother moved Frost and his sister back with her to their family’s roots in New England. The region took hold on him and the poetry that grew from his mind.
Frost lived in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Vermont for most of his life. Over the course of his life he was variously a farmer, teacher, lecturer at universities, and scholar in residence at places such as Harvard, Amherst, Dartmouth, and the University of Michigan. Most of his poetry comes from his New England surroundings, and, while it is all musical, it is variously appreciative, whimsical, tragic, mysterious, and just plain lovely.
I have always liked Frost’s poetry because, like Hopkins and Dickinson, he was able to find wonder and beauty and mystery in ordinary people, things, and situations. Both biographers agree on the significance of the poem which opens Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays, “The Pasture”:
I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long—You come too.
I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n’t be gone long—You come too
This early poem is quintessential Frost: Clear meter and rhyme. Engaging with the creation, both to discover and preserve its beauty and function and to ensure its future. And the invitation to the reader to join him at his work.
Plunkett focuses more specifically on the poetry in his account, while Parini offers more details of his life and work. The two books parallel one another nicely, and the effect on me of reading them together (Parini’s for the second time) has been to plunge me back into Frost’s oeuvre with a renewed desire to appreciate and learn.
Frost practiced a discipline of attentiveness to his surroundings which I long to master. He could see beauty and even divinity in things most of us simply take for granted. He was not a Christian, but he did seem to have had some sense of a transcendent being whose existence brought order and beauty to the world. His poems encourage us to be attentive and reflective as well. And for us who believe God’s glory can indeed be found in even the most quotidian of things or tasks, Frost’s focused eye and melodic words can be a refresher course in creational theology.
Frost is a good place to begin relearning the power and beauty of poetry, since his poems, while deep, are plain-spoken and written mostly in classical forms, with meter, rhyme, and stanza. Volumes of his verse, including all his six separate books, are readily available and can hold in thrall any who will take the time to read and ponder the craftsmanship and love that pervade his verse.