Life of the Poet Robert

¶ … life of the poet Robert Frost. Specifically, it will research the author and connect his life with his work "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." Robert Frost is one of America's best-loved poets, and many of his works incorporated the beauty of nature in them. His poetry is well-known the world over and there is something inspiring and yet cozy about much of his poetry. The elements of his poems may seem simple, but many of them are more complex than they seem. Frost was a complex man, and so his works reflect his own dimensions, beliefs, and complexities. He wrote poetry nearly his entire life, and his poems are still some of the most popular poems to ever originate in America.

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco in March 1874. His father died when he was eleven, and he moved to Massachusetts to live with his grandparents. He was co-valedictorian for his high school, and began writing poetry during his high school years. He attended Dartmouth College for only one term, and then worked at several different jobs, including journalist and schoolteacher. He sold his first poem in 1894 and his first book of poetry in 1913. In 1897, he returned to school at Harvard, and attended two more years. In 1900, he moved to New Hampshire and attempted to become a poultry farmer, but he returned to teaching in 1906. His years in New Hampshire provided many of the poems that he would become world famous for, including "Mending Wall" and "Mowin."

In 1912, he sold the farm and left America with his family, settling in England, and it was here that a small London publisher published his first book of poetry in 1913. Frost and his family returned to America in 1915, and he found an American publisher in Boston. He bought another farm in New Hampshire, continued to teach and write, and followed this profile throughout his life. He won a Pulitzer Prize (the first of four) in 1924, and continued publishing books of poetry. After World War II, he wrote sporadically. He died in January 1963 at the age of eighty-eight (Pritchard).

Many critics found Frost's poems simple and too sentimental, but his biographer notes others were more impressed with his work. He notes, "While many reviewers were content to speak of the American poet's 'simplicity' and artlessness, Thomas recognized the originality and success of Frost's experiments with the cadences of vernacular speech -- with what Frost called 'the sound of sense'" (Prichard). Many of his works celebrate his youth and roots in the snow-covered landscape of New England, including one of his most famous, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is one of Frost's most well-known and beloved poems. It was first published in March 1923, and is still one of the most studied and critiqued American poems (Hamilton 129). One critic says of the poem, "It is deeply satisfying, and strange, yet somehow, for all its strangeness, familiar" (Hamilton 123). The poem is deceptively simple, and yet it conjures up images of Christmas, peace, tranquility, and small town America. The poet writes, "My little horse must think it queer / To stop without a farmhouse near / Between the woods and frozen lake / The darkest evening of the year / He gives his harness bells a shake / To ask if there is some mistake. / The only other sound's the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake" (Frost 275). The narrator has stopped to enjoy the magic of a snowfall on a winter evening. In these few lines, he manages to convey the cold, the natural world around him, his own dependence on the horse and sleigh to get him home to his own house, and his ability to stop for a moment to enjoy the beauty around him.

The only serious tone of the poem comes at the end, when Frost writes, "The woods are lovely, dark and deep. / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep" (Frost 275). Frost effectively breaks the spell of the magical woods and acknowledges there is another world waiting for him. This is a world full of commitments and "promises," just as most of us endure every day. However, Frost's narrator has the ability to stop for a moment and enjoy the snowfall, while most readers do not. Thus, the narrator conveys a sense of commitment, but also brings out a bit of envy in the reader. The narrator can enjoy a moment's peace, while many modern people cannot enjoy that luxury.