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American poet
FROST: Robert 1874-1963
Four-time Pulitzer Prize Winner for Poetry
Born: 26 March 1874, San Francisco, California, United States
Died: 29 January 1963, Boston, Massachusetts, United States

A poem is “never a put-up job…. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a loneliness. It is never a thought to begin with. It is at its best when it is a tantalizing vagueness.” Tragedy and misfortune followed Frost: most of his children suffered from various maladies and died young – this in addition to many failed business ventures. He moved to England in 1912 where he met Ezra Pound who was the first to recognise Frost’s genius, but when war broke out he returned to America in 1914. He taught at numerous universities and colleges, predominantly at Amherst College where the library is named in his honour. He attended Kennedy’s inauguration and was regarded as America’s Poet Laureate.

Quotations

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”
“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”
“The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.”

Selected Bibliography (*Best known)
Robert Frost wrote over 150 poems

POETRY (* Famous poems)

* The Road Not Taken: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both and be one traveller
Fire and Ice: Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice.
Acquainted with the Night: I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain — and back in rain
Once by the Pacific: The shattered water made a misty din
The Freedom of the Moon: I’ve tried the new moon tilted in the air

Plays

A Way Out: A One Act
The Cow’s in the Corn: A One Act Irish Play in Rhyme
A Masque of Reason
A Masque of Mercy

Prose books

The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer
Robert Frost and John Bartlett: The Record of a Friendship, by Margaret Bartlett Anderson
Selected Letters of Robert Frost
Interviews with Robert Frost
Family Letters of Robert and Elinor Frost
Robert Frost and Sidney Cox: Forty Years of Friendship
The Notebooks of Robert Frost, edited by Robert Faggen

Letters

The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 1, 1886–1921, edited by Donald Sheehy, Mark Richardson, and Robert Faggen