A poem for every day

Although Robert Frost often described rural life in New England in his poems and avoided experiments with poetic form, he was definitely a modern poet considering the language he used and complexity of the themes he discussed.

Born: March 26, 1874
San Francisco, California, US
Who is Robert Lee Frost: American poet, playwright

Biography of Robert Frost

Born in San Francisco, Robert Frost moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts at the age of 11. His interest in creating poems became obvious during the high school years. Although he studied at Harvard University, he did not actually get a college degree.

Frost changed several jobs, from delivering newspapers to teaching, yet none of them satisfied him as he felt that his real passion was poetry. At the age of 21 Frost married Elinor Miriam White, whom he met in high school. With Elinor, they had six children.

Robert Frost died in 1963.

Creative work of Robert Frost

Robert Frost’s poetic legacy has a unique quality: it refers neither to traditional nor to modern poetry. It is somehow tied to both centuries. From the one hand, unlike many modernists, he never experimented with form and clearly did not belong to any poetic movement.

From the other hand, he avoided traditional verse forms and developed very original idiom. The fact that Frost actually belonged to the XX century can be clearly seen in the way he used language, in the intricate psychological patterns he created, in his ability to create ambiguous and ironical texts.

Robert Frost poems

Frost’s first poem to be published was “My Butterfly” (1894), which was followed by a cycle of poems privately printed.

His first work to gain critical acclaim was “A Boy’s Will and North of Boston”. At the age of 50 Frost won his first Pulitzer Prize for “New Hampshire”. Over the following 20 years he won three more Pulitzer Prizes for “Collected Poems”, “A Further Range”, and “A Witness Tree”.

Popular poems by Robert Lee Frost

1. The Road Not Taken
2. Nothing Gold Can Stay
3. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Facts about Robert Frost

• Frost’s father fell victim to tuberculosis when the future poet was only eleven years old
• Frost had a sister named Jeanie
• the list of occupations Frost tried during his lifetime included teaching, editing, farming, and working as a cobbler
• at the age of 20, he got $15 (an equivalent of $434 today) for his first published poem, “My Butterfly”
• while Frost’s poems are often set in rural areas of New England, they are devoted to very complex social and philosophical issues
• Frost’s future wife, Elinor Miriam White, shared valedictorian honors with him in high school
• Elinor rejected his first offer because she wanted to finish college before getting married
• during the nine years when Frost and Elinor worked on their farm, the poet used to write early in the mornings
• the poet received four Pulitzer Prizes
• among the awards he received was the Congressional Gold Medal.

Robert Lee Frost death: January 29, 1963, Boston, Massachusetts, US