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Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays
Justly celebrated at home and abroad, Robert Frost is perhaps America’s greatest twentieth-century poet and a towering figure in American letters. From the publication of his first collections, A Boy’s Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914), Frost was recognized as a poet of unique power and formal skill, and the enduring significance of his work has been acknowledged by each subsequent generation. His poetry ranges from deceptively simply pastoral lyrics and genial, vernacular genre pieces to darker meditations, complex and ironic.
Here, based on extensive research into his manuscripts and published work, is the first authoritative and truly comprehensive collection of his writings. Brought together for the first time in a Library of America single volume is all the major poetry, a generous selection of uncollected poems, all of Frost’s dramatic writing, and the most extensive gathering of his prose writings ever published, several of which are printed here for the first time.
The core of this collection is the 1949 Complete Poems of Robert Frost, the last collection supervised by Frost himself. This version of the poems is free of unauthorized editorial changes introduced into subsequent editions. Also included is In the Clearing (1962), Frost’s final volume of poetry. Verse drawn from letters, articles, pamphlets, and journals makes up the largest selection of uncollected poems ever assembled, including nearly two dozen beautiful early works printed for the first time. Also gathered here are all the dramatic works: three plays and two verse masques.
The unprecedented prose section includes more than three times as many items as any other collection available. It is rich and diverse, presenting many newly discovered or rediscovered pieces. Especially unusual items include Frost’s contribution to John F. Kennedy’s inauguration and two fascinating 1959 essays on “The Future of Man.” Several manuscript items are published here for the first time, including the essays “‘Caveat Poeta’” and “The Way There,” Frost’s remarks on being appointed poetry consultant to the Library of Congress in 1958, the preface to a proposed new edition of North of Boston, and many others. A selection of letters represents all of Frost’s important comments about prosody, poetics, style, and his theory of “sentence sounds.”
Here, based on extensive research into his manuscripts and published work, is the first authoritative and truly comprehensive collection of his writings. Brought together for the first time in a Library of America single volume is all the major poetry, a generous selection of uncollected poems, all of Frost’s dramatic writing, and the most extensive gathering of his prose writings ever published, several of which are printed here for the first time.
The core of this collection is the 1949 Complete Poems of Robert Frost, the last collection supervised by Frost himself. This version of the poems is free of unauthorized editorial changes introduced into subsequent editions. Also included is In the Clearing (1962), Frost’s final volume of poetry. Verse drawn from letters, articles, pamphlets, and journals makes up the largest selection of uncollected poems ever assembled, including nearly two dozen beautiful early works printed for the first time. Also gathered here are all the dramatic works: three plays and two verse masques.
The unprecedented prose section includes more than three times as many items as any other collection available. It is rich and diverse, presenting many newly discovered or rediscovered pieces. Especially unusual items include Frost’s contribution to John F. Kennedy’s inauguration and two fascinating 1959 essays on “The Future of Man.” Several manuscript items are published here for the first time, including the essays “‘Caveat Poeta’” and “The Way There,” Frost’s remarks on being appointed poetry consultant to the Library of Congress in 1958, the preface to a proposed new edition of North of Boston, and many others. A selection of letters represents all of Frost’s important comments about prosody, poetics, style, and his theory of “sentence sounds.”
1036 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1995
About the author
Robert Frost
676 books4,715 followersFlinty, moody, plainspoken and deep, Robert Frost was one of America's most popular 20th-century poets. Frost was farming in Derry, New Hampshire when, at the age of 38, he sold the farm, uprooted his family and moved to England, where he devoted himself to his poetry. His first two books of verse, A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914), were immediate successes. In 1915 he returned to the United States and continued to write while living in New Hampshire and then Vermont. His pastoral images of apple trees and stone fences -- along with his solitary, man-of-few-words poetic voice -- helped define the modern image of rural New England. Frost's poems include "Mending Wall" ("Good fences make good neighbors"), "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" ("Whose woods these are I think I know"), and perhaps his most famous work, "The Road Not Taken" ("Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- / I took the one less traveled by"). Frost was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times: in 1924, 1931, 1937 and 1943. He also served as "Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress" from 1958-59; that position was renamed as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry (or simply Poet Laureate) in 1986.
Frost recited his poem "The Gift Outright" at the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy... Frost attended both Dartmouth College and Harvard, but did not graduate from either school... Frost preferred traditional rhyme and meter in poetry; his famous dismissal of free verse was, "I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down."
Frost recited his poem "The Gift Outright" at the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy... Frost attended both Dartmouth College and Harvard, but did not graduate from either school... Frost preferred traditional rhyme and meter in poetry; his famous dismissal of free verse was, "I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down."
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October 1, 2009
Despite metaphor’s singular importance to literature and perception, few literary artists have consciously explored its hyperreal implications. Robert Frost is a rare exception. He frequently struggled with the implications of metaphor in his work, coming to an understanding “that all thinking...is metaphorical” and, thus, a simulation of reality (Frost 720). Indeed, Frost’s preoccupation with metaphor and, subsequently, simulation make his poetry and prose important manifestations of literary hyperrealism. Not only does his work illustrate the replacement of the real with a poetic “operational double,” it reveals the violence inherent in the process of simulation (Baudrillard 2).
Reality is a state with which we cannot engage. The best we can do is simulate reality, creating an illusion of reality that is neither real nor unreal—but, rather, hyperreal. Jean Baudrillard expresses this process in his essay “The Precession of Simulacra:”
It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all of the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes. (2)
The fundamental mode of this substitution is metaphor -- the ultimate simulacrum. To generate “signs of the real” one must interpret the reality being simulated. The resulting interpretation or “sign” is immutably metaphorical, and, being such, it can only approximate the real, it can never actually be the real. Moreover, metaphor simulates perception; yet, nothing can ever be truly perceived because perception itself is necessarily metaphorical. Thus, perception, metaphor and literature can never engage with the real -- they are inextricably bound to the hyperreal.
Poetry is one of the most explicit manifestations of hyperreality. Every stage of poetry is metaphorical. It is metaphorical in thought, concept, execution, and translation -- a perfect simulacrum. A poem is an “operational double” of reality, Baudrillard’s “perfectly descriptive machine,” that does not just represent the real, it replaces the real. Simulation, then, is not a benign act of representation; it is a violent act of replacement, which “suffices to render both [the real and the simulacrum:] artificial” (Baudrillard 9).
Nowhere is this violence better illustrated than in “The Road Not Taken.” Frost’s most famous poem simulates the poet’s experiences hiking in the woods with Edward Thomas and, ultimately, replaces them. Frost reputedly revealed Edward Thomas as the inspiration for his poem in a letter to Louis Untermeyer: “He...said that it was really about his friend Edward Thomas, who when they walked together always castigated himself for not having taken another path than the one they took” (128). Clearly, “The Road Not Taken” is based on an actual occurrence. Yet, from the moment the original event occurs, the experience can only be recalled through simulation and, once the experience is simulated, reality is supplanted by hyperreality. Like the dopplegänger of myth, simulation strips the real of its primacy and replaces the real with its hyperreal self.
Hence, even Thomas’ personal castigation “for not having taken another path” is inevitably superseded by the traditional reading of “The Road Not Taken,” which figures Frost’s poem as a meditation on the narrator’s “profound awareness of the complexity of choice” (Johannes Kjørven 58). The simulation replaces Thomas’ actual reaction with the narrator’s hyperreal aggrandizement of the choice made:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. (16-20)
Edward Thomas supposedly reprimanded himself for “not having taken another path,” but the narrator of “The Road Not Taken” considers the choice before he makes it, then rationalizes his choice into one “that has made all the difference.” Thomas’ ephemeral emotional response is nowhere to be found. It is dispelled and replaced by the very simulation it inspired -- just as is Thomas’ reality. Indeed, only the most fervent biographers and scholars know that an actual event inspired “The Road Not Taken”; yet, their primary concern, as with every reader of Frost’s poetry, is the simulation rather than the event. If the actual event is thought of at all it is secondary to the simulation it inspired.
There is still another step in simulation’s aggression, however. Once an “operational double” replaces reality it must also precede it. As Baudrillard says, “the territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is...the map that precedes the territory -- precession of simulacra” (1). Thomas’ own engagement with “The Road Not Taken” exemplifies this precession: “Thomas failed to understand it as a poem about himself; but insisted...to Frost that ‘I doubt if you can get anybody to see the fun of the thing without showing them and advising them which kind of laugh they are to turn on’” (William Pritchard 128). Here, the precession of the “operational double” is exposed by Thomas’ concern with the poem and its potential audience rather than the event. Although he might retain the stimuli of the original walk to add to his interpretation, he is engaging with and interpreting only the model -- the real is inaccessible. Moreover, he displays a preoccupation with the audience’s reaction to “The Road Not Taken” that is indifferent to their knowledge of the actual events. Indeed, the audience’s understanding of Frost’s “fun” is more important to Thomas than their understanding of his role as inspiration. All concerns with reality, therefore, are usurped by the words of the poem, conjuring myriad images and interpretations in the minds of every participant, both readers and walkers alike, making even the original moment nothing more than an interpretation.
In fact, it no longer matters what the “real” wood or paths look like. Their simulation in “The Road Not Taken” replaces “reality” with a “metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that...short circuits all of [reality’s:] vicissitudes:”
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black. (Frost 6-12)
In the hyperreality of Frost’s poem, the woods are always “yellow,” the “leaves” never shift on the forest floor, and the paths themselves are forever “worn about the same” (1). No subtle change of stimuli can ever occur. While a stimulus in a simulation can be interpreted differently, no subtle shift of a body’s position, nor any change of light —- the vicissitudes of reality -- can ever actually alter the stimuli. Instead, a state of metastability is achieved where the setting can only be interpreted through unchanging stimuli; thus, each interpretation only increases the stability of the poem’s metaphors. Thomas’ recollection of the actual event, then, is unavoidably informed and replaced by the “perfectly descriptive machine” of Frost’s poem.
Yet, potent displays of hyperrealism in Frost’s poetry are not isolated to “The Road Not Taken.” In some cases, Frost actually confronts Baudrillard’s post-structuralism head on, conjuring metaphors that deal directly with the impossibility of reality. “For Once, Then, Something” is inescapably hyperreal, consciously illustrating the process of simulation and the untouchable reality it invariably supplants:
Once, when trying with chin against a well curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—-and then lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water... (7-11)
The “picture” in the water is a reflection of the narrator and his world. It is a mirror image that simulates “Me myself in the summer heaven godlike / Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs” (5-6). Simulation, once again, reveals hyperreality through an “operational double”—-the narrator’s reflection-—which usurps the reality of the model by being “not exactly like it, [but:] a bit more exact. There is never similitude, any more than there is exactitude. What is exact is already too exact” (Baudrillard 107). Indeed, the simulation is both more and less than the model. The narrator is represented and replaced by a simulation, but the simulation also reflects a narrator that does not and cannot exist outside the reflection. After all, visual perception of the self is non-existent without simulation and, even then, “nothing resembles itself,...like all fantasies of the exact synthesis or resurrection of the real, [the reflection:] is already no longer real, [it:] is already hyperreal” (Baudrillard 108). Thus, the reality of the narrator’s imagined identity, like Lacan’s “imaginary identity at the ‘mirror stage’ of development,” disappears into the hyperreality of its “operational double” (Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan 123).
The hyperreal “picture” of the narrator’s reflection, however, obfuscates more than the reality of his identity. There is “something white, uncertain” hidden in the “depths” of the well, and Frost uses it to illustrate the total inaccessibility of reality:
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. (11-14)
Situating this “something white, uncertain” as the real, Frost subverts reality by showing that it can only be hinted at: “What was that whiteness? Truth? A pebble of quartz?” Ultimately, its reality cannot be known. The state of “something white” is uncertain. It can only be seen through a lens of “too clear water,” water that is “not exactly like [water:],” water that is “already too exact,” water that is “already hyperreal.” Thus, when a drop of water sends out “a ripple” that obscures “something white” it is not an imposition of hyperreality, it is merely a reinforcement of the natural state of hyperreality that is already in place. Every perception and every shift in perception, every metaphor and every alteration in metaphor is a simulation; therefore, the “something white” can never be perceived in a state of reality because the act of interpretation insures that it is already an “operational double”-—the simulation must precede and usurp reality.
Frost’s fascination with the simulation of thought and metaphor appears again in his poem “Directive.” From beginning to end, it is a paragon of simulation. Consider the opening lines of the poem, which reveal “Directive’s” shift to a past “time” of hyperreality: “Back out of all this now too much for us / Back in a time made simple by the loss / Of detail...” (1-3). Here, the narrator expresses the need to escape from one state into another, to enter “a time made simple;” yet, to do so is to enter into a hyperreality he deliberately generates. Indeed, this new “time” is merely a simulation of his own imaginings. Hence, it cannot have any reality of its own.
This then raises the question: is the narrator leaving behind the real for the hyperreal? The answer is certainly not. Instead, the “all of this now too much for us,” which the narrator seemingly rejects in favor of “a time made simple,” is itself hyperreal. As Baudrillard says, “to simulate is to feign to have what one doesn’t have” and this is precisely how the narrator simulates the “all of this now too much for us” (3). It is situated as an alternative to “a time made simple.” Neither alternative, however, is his to reject or supplant because the simulacra of the narrator’s fancy are manifested in the “operational double” of a poem, which is beyond ownership. Moreover, the seemingly opposite alternatives embody the two villages that the narrator later describes as having “...faded / Into each other;” therefore, they are already inextricably bound together in the same simulation, comprising one hyperreality (34-35). Thus, no reality can be left behind.
The hyperreality of “Directive” is further compounded by an increase in the sources of simulation. Unlike “The Road Not Taken” and “For Once, Then, Something,” it is not just the narrator’s perceptions and simulacra that need to be dealt with:
The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you,
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry—
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered. (8-12)
Although the “guide” is an element of the narrator’s hyperreality, he is more than a simulacrum. He is a potentially active participant capable of summoning his own simulacra. The “guide” conjures the metaphor of the quarry’s “Great monolithic knees” and it is his misdirection that leads the reader down the “lost” road. Thus, the narrator’s power to simulate is momentarily usurped by the “guide,” who creates a simulacrum within a simulacrum. In addition, the narrator explicitly invites the reader to participate in the act of simulation, thereby pushing “Directive” even deeper into hyperreality: “Make yourself up a cheering song of how / Someone’s road home from work this once was” (29-30). The reader is directed to create “operational doubles” of the road, the people and their employment—-to substitute “the signs of the real for the real”-—to create a hyperreality in which one can become “lost enough to find [one:]self” (Frost 36). Therefore, the narrator implicates both the reader and the “guide” in the process of simulation, assuring that three manifestations of hyperreality, rather than one, must be considered within “Directive.”
For all “Directive’s” complexity, however, the most plentiful evidence of its hyperrealism is the abundance of straightforward simulacra. “There is a house that is no more a house / Upon a farm that is no more a farm / And in a town that is no more a town” (Frost 5-7). Even though they are “no more,” the house, the farm and the town clearly exist. How do they exist? As simulacra conjured by the narrator. Moreover, the “Glacier,” the “pecker fretted apple trees,” “the children’s house of make believe,” and the “drinking goblet like the Grail” are all simulations, manifestations of hyperreality that blur “any distinction between the real and the imaginary” (Frost 16, 28, 41, 57 / Baudrillard 3). In “Directive,” like much of Frost’s poetry, simulations abound-—and where there are simulations, there must be hyperreality.
“We don’t write poetry about the world, the world is poetry.” People, senses, light, the most basic sensory experiences, are texts that we perceive and interpret through metaphor. All thinking, all feeling, all sensing, indeed all consciousness is necessarily metaphorical and, thus, hyperreal. Poetry, films, short stories, novels, music, all the arts, are simulations of our hyperreal state. Frost may have lacked the post-structural language necessary to name this revelation when he created his poetry, yet he was undoubtedly not an unwitting practitioner of simulation: “I have wanted in late years to go further and further in making metaphor the whole of thinking. I find someone now and then to agree with me that all thinking...is metaphorical” (Frost 720). If Frost had lived a little longer he would have found more than a few to agree with him. Metaphor, perception, simulation. Call it what we will it cannot be reality. Our state of being is hyperreal and Frost intuited this in his poetry. He was a post-structuralist when his contemporaries were still exploring post-modernism. He was a poet ahead of his time.
WORKS CITED
Baudrillard, Jean. “The Precession of Simulacra.” Simulacra and Simulation. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan, 1994. 1-42.
Frost, Robert. Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc,
1995
Kjørven, Johannes. Robert Frost’s Emergent Design: The Truth of the Self In-between Belief and Unbelief . Oslo: Solum Forlag A/S, 1987.
Pritchard, William H. Frost: a literary life reconsidered. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP,
1984.
Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael. “Strangers to Ourselves.” Literary Theory: an anthology. eds. Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers Inc, 1998.
Reality is a state with which we cannot engage. The best we can do is simulate reality, creating an illusion of reality that is neither real nor unreal—but, rather, hyperreal. Jean Baudrillard expresses this process in his essay “The Precession of Simulacra:”
It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all of the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes. (2)
The fundamental mode of this substitution is metaphor -- the ultimate simulacrum. To generate “signs of the real” one must interpret the reality being simulated. The resulting interpretation or “sign” is immutably metaphorical, and, being such, it can only approximate the real, it can never actually be the real. Moreover, metaphor simulates perception; yet, nothing can ever be truly perceived because perception itself is necessarily metaphorical. Thus, perception, metaphor and literature can never engage with the real -- they are inextricably bound to the hyperreal.
Poetry is one of the most explicit manifestations of hyperreality. Every stage of poetry is metaphorical. It is metaphorical in thought, concept, execution, and translation -- a perfect simulacrum. A poem is an “operational double” of reality, Baudrillard’s “perfectly descriptive machine,” that does not just represent the real, it replaces the real. Simulation, then, is not a benign act of representation; it is a violent act of replacement, which “suffices to render both [the real and the simulacrum:] artificial” (Baudrillard 9).
Nowhere is this violence better illustrated than in “The Road Not Taken.” Frost’s most famous poem simulates the poet’s experiences hiking in the woods with Edward Thomas and, ultimately, replaces them. Frost reputedly revealed Edward Thomas as the inspiration for his poem in a letter to Louis Untermeyer: “He...said that it was really about his friend Edward Thomas, who when they walked together always castigated himself for not having taken another path than the one they took” (128). Clearly, “The Road Not Taken” is based on an actual occurrence. Yet, from the moment the original event occurs, the experience can only be recalled through simulation and, once the experience is simulated, reality is supplanted by hyperreality. Like the dopplegänger of myth, simulation strips the real of its primacy and replaces the real with its hyperreal self.
Hence, even Thomas’ personal castigation “for not having taken another path” is inevitably superseded by the traditional reading of “The Road Not Taken,” which figures Frost’s poem as a meditation on the narrator’s “profound awareness of the complexity of choice” (Johannes Kjørven 58). The simulation replaces Thomas’ actual reaction with the narrator’s hyperreal aggrandizement of the choice made:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. (16-20)
Edward Thomas supposedly reprimanded himself for “not having taken another path,” but the narrator of “The Road Not Taken” considers the choice before he makes it, then rationalizes his choice into one “that has made all the difference.” Thomas’ ephemeral emotional response is nowhere to be found. It is dispelled and replaced by the very simulation it inspired -- just as is Thomas’ reality. Indeed, only the most fervent biographers and scholars know that an actual event inspired “The Road Not Taken”; yet, their primary concern, as with every reader of Frost’s poetry, is the simulation rather than the event. If the actual event is thought of at all it is secondary to the simulation it inspired.
There is still another step in simulation’s aggression, however. Once an “operational double” replaces reality it must also precede it. As Baudrillard says, “the territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is...the map that precedes the territory -- precession of simulacra” (1). Thomas’ own engagement with “The Road Not Taken” exemplifies this precession: “Thomas failed to understand it as a poem about himself; but insisted...to Frost that ‘I doubt if you can get anybody to see the fun of the thing without showing them and advising them which kind of laugh they are to turn on’” (William Pritchard 128). Here, the precession of the “operational double” is exposed by Thomas’ concern with the poem and its potential audience rather than the event. Although he might retain the stimuli of the original walk to add to his interpretation, he is engaging with and interpreting only the model -- the real is inaccessible. Moreover, he displays a preoccupation with the audience’s reaction to “The Road Not Taken” that is indifferent to their knowledge of the actual events. Indeed, the audience’s understanding of Frost’s “fun” is more important to Thomas than their understanding of his role as inspiration. All concerns with reality, therefore, are usurped by the words of the poem, conjuring myriad images and interpretations in the minds of every participant, both readers and walkers alike, making even the original moment nothing more than an interpretation.
In fact, it no longer matters what the “real” wood or paths look like. Their simulation in “The Road Not Taken” replaces “reality” with a “metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that...short circuits all of [reality’s:] vicissitudes:”
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black. (Frost 6-12)
In the hyperreality of Frost’s poem, the woods are always “yellow,” the “leaves” never shift on the forest floor, and the paths themselves are forever “worn about the same” (1). No subtle change of stimuli can ever occur. While a stimulus in a simulation can be interpreted differently, no subtle shift of a body’s position, nor any change of light —- the vicissitudes of reality -- can ever actually alter the stimuli. Instead, a state of metastability is achieved where the setting can only be interpreted through unchanging stimuli; thus, each interpretation only increases the stability of the poem’s metaphors. Thomas’ recollection of the actual event, then, is unavoidably informed and replaced by the “perfectly descriptive machine” of Frost’s poem.
Yet, potent displays of hyperrealism in Frost’s poetry are not isolated to “The Road Not Taken.” In some cases, Frost actually confronts Baudrillard’s post-structuralism head on, conjuring metaphors that deal directly with the impossibility of reality. “For Once, Then, Something” is inescapably hyperreal, consciously illustrating the process of simulation and the untouchable reality it invariably supplants:
Once, when trying with chin against a well curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—-and then lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water... (7-11)
The “picture” in the water is a reflection of the narrator and his world. It is a mirror image that simulates “Me myself in the summer heaven godlike / Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs” (5-6). Simulation, once again, reveals hyperreality through an “operational double”—-the narrator’s reflection-—which usurps the reality of the model by being “not exactly like it, [but:] a bit more exact. There is never similitude, any more than there is exactitude. What is exact is already too exact” (Baudrillard 107). Indeed, the simulation is both more and less than the model. The narrator is represented and replaced by a simulation, but the simulation also reflects a narrator that does not and cannot exist outside the reflection. After all, visual perception of the self is non-existent without simulation and, even then, “nothing resembles itself,...like all fantasies of the exact synthesis or resurrection of the real, [the reflection:] is already no longer real, [it:] is already hyperreal” (Baudrillard 108). Thus, the reality of the narrator’s imagined identity, like Lacan’s “imaginary identity at the ‘mirror stage’ of development,” disappears into the hyperreality of its “operational double” (Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan 123).
The hyperreal “picture” of the narrator’s reflection, however, obfuscates more than the reality of his identity. There is “something white, uncertain” hidden in the “depths” of the well, and Frost uses it to illustrate the total inaccessibility of reality:
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. (11-14)
Situating this “something white, uncertain” as the real, Frost subverts reality by showing that it can only be hinted at: “What was that whiteness? Truth? A pebble of quartz?” Ultimately, its reality cannot be known. The state of “something white” is uncertain. It can only be seen through a lens of “too clear water,” water that is “not exactly like [water:],” water that is “already too exact,” water that is “already hyperreal.” Thus, when a drop of water sends out “a ripple” that obscures “something white” it is not an imposition of hyperreality, it is merely a reinforcement of the natural state of hyperreality that is already in place. Every perception and every shift in perception, every metaphor and every alteration in metaphor is a simulation; therefore, the “something white” can never be perceived in a state of reality because the act of interpretation insures that it is already an “operational double”-—the simulation must precede and usurp reality.
Frost’s fascination with the simulation of thought and metaphor appears again in his poem “Directive.” From beginning to end, it is a paragon of simulation. Consider the opening lines of the poem, which reveal “Directive’s” shift to a past “time” of hyperreality: “Back out of all this now too much for us / Back in a time made simple by the loss / Of detail...” (1-3). Here, the narrator expresses the need to escape from one state into another, to enter “a time made simple;” yet, to do so is to enter into a hyperreality he deliberately generates. Indeed, this new “time” is merely a simulation of his own imaginings. Hence, it cannot have any reality of its own.
This then raises the question: is the narrator leaving behind the real for the hyperreal? The answer is certainly not. Instead, the “all of this now too much for us,” which the narrator seemingly rejects in favor of “a time made simple,” is itself hyperreal. As Baudrillard says, “to simulate is to feign to have what one doesn’t have” and this is precisely how the narrator simulates the “all of this now too much for us” (3). It is situated as an alternative to “a time made simple.” Neither alternative, however, is his to reject or supplant because the simulacra of the narrator’s fancy are manifested in the “operational double” of a poem, which is beyond ownership. Moreover, the seemingly opposite alternatives embody the two villages that the narrator later describes as having “...faded / Into each other;” therefore, they are already inextricably bound together in the same simulation, comprising one hyperreality (34-35). Thus, no reality can be left behind.
The hyperreality of “Directive” is further compounded by an increase in the sources of simulation. Unlike “The Road Not Taken” and “For Once, Then, Something,” it is not just the narrator’s perceptions and simulacra that need to be dealt with:
The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you,
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry—
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered. (8-12)
Although the “guide” is an element of the narrator’s hyperreality, he is more than a simulacrum. He is a potentially active participant capable of summoning his own simulacra. The “guide” conjures the metaphor of the quarry’s “Great monolithic knees” and it is his misdirection that leads the reader down the “lost” road. Thus, the narrator’s power to simulate is momentarily usurped by the “guide,” who creates a simulacrum within a simulacrum. In addition, the narrator explicitly invites the reader to participate in the act of simulation, thereby pushing “Directive” even deeper into hyperreality: “Make yourself up a cheering song of how / Someone’s road home from work this once was” (29-30). The reader is directed to create “operational doubles” of the road, the people and their employment—-to substitute “the signs of the real for the real”-—to create a hyperreality in which one can become “lost enough to find [one:]self” (Frost 36). Therefore, the narrator implicates both the reader and the “guide” in the process of simulation, assuring that three manifestations of hyperreality, rather than one, must be considered within “Directive.”
For all “Directive’s” complexity, however, the most plentiful evidence of its hyperrealism is the abundance of straightforward simulacra. “There is a house that is no more a house / Upon a farm that is no more a farm / And in a town that is no more a town” (Frost 5-7). Even though they are “no more,” the house, the farm and the town clearly exist. How do they exist? As simulacra conjured by the narrator. Moreover, the “Glacier,” the “pecker fretted apple trees,” “the children’s house of make believe,” and the “drinking goblet like the Grail” are all simulations, manifestations of hyperreality that blur “any distinction between the real and the imaginary” (Frost 16, 28, 41, 57 / Baudrillard 3). In “Directive,” like much of Frost’s poetry, simulations abound-—and where there are simulations, there must be hyperreality.
“We don’t write poetry about the world, the world is poetry.” People, senses, light, the most basic sensory experiences, are texts that we perceive and interpret through metaphor. All thinking, all feeling, all sensing, indeed all consciousness is necessarily metaphorical and, thus, hyperreal. Poetry, films, short stories, novels, music, all the arts, are simulations of our hyperreal state. Frost may have lacked the post-structural language necessary to name this revelation when he created his poetry, yet he was undoubtedly not an unwitting practitioner of simulation: “I have wanted in late years to go further and further in making metaphor the whole of thinking. I find someone now and then to agree with me that all thinking...is metaphorical” (Frost 720). If Frost had lived a little longer he would have found more than a few to agree with him. Metaphor, perception, simulation. Call it what we will it cannot be reality. Our state of being is hyperreal and Frost intuited this in his poetry. He was a post-structuralist when his contemporaries were still exploring post-modernism. He was a poet ahead of his time.
WORKS CITED
Baudrillard, Jean. “The Precession of Simulacra.” Simulacra and Simulation. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan, 1994. 1-42.
Frost, Robert. Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc,
1995
Kjørven, Johannes. Robert Frost’s Emergent Design: The Truth of the Self In-between Belief and Unbelief . Oslo: Solum Forlag A/S, 1987.
Pritchard, William H. Frost: a literary life reconsidered. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP,
1984.
Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael. “Strangers to Ourselves.” Literary Theory: an anthology. eds. Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers Inc, 1998.
September 2, 2021
The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems
Robert Frost was the only poet to win four Pulitzer Prizes in Poetry: New Hampshire (1924), Collected Poems (1931), A Further Range (1937), and A Witness Tree (1943).
All the Pulitzer prize winning collections and many others are contained here, some three hundred plus poems.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
from The Road Not Taken
I bought this tome a decade ago to read to my children but we never got around to reading anything more than a half a dozen Frost poems - my kids related more to Sandburg's work anyway.
But now I've read Frost's poems and below are my favorites in order of publication date. Many of his earlier poems are now in the public domain.
1. The Death of the Hired Man - a powerful and thought provoking poem about who amongst us is responsible for an unreliable hired hand, now old and near death.
2. The Road Not Taken - has the best ending of perhaps any poem
3. Christmas Trees - a man is asked to sell his forest of pine trees for three pennies a piece
4. Birches - oh to be young again to climb up and slide down a birch tree's pliant branches
5. Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening - a famous and contemplative short poem
6. New Hampshire - long poem about his home state detailing the pro's and con's. At times beautiful, at other times witty and sometimes cheeky.
7. Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter - another contemplative poem amidst a snowy forest
8. Canis Major - an ode to the overdog in the night sky
9. A Lone Striker - a man gives up on the chaos of modern life and work in the mill, saying to himself "They will know where to find me"
10. Peril of Hope - a possible early frost is coming to an apple orchard and it causes anxiety
4 stars
Robert Frost was the only poet to win four Pulitzer Prizes in Poetry: New Hampshire (1924), Collected Poems (1931), A Further Range (1937), and A Witness Tree (1943).
All the Pulitzer prize winning collections and many others are contained here, some three hundred plus poems.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
from The Road Not Taken
I bought this tome a decade ago to read to my children but we never got around to reading anything more than a half a dozen Frost poems - my kids related more to Sandburg's work anyway.
But now I've read Frost's poems and below are my favorites in order of publication date. Many of his earlier poems are now in the public domain.
1. The Death of the Hired Man - a powerful and thought provoking poem about who amongst us is responsible for an unreliable hired hand, now old and near death.
2. The Road Not Taken - has the best ending of perhaps any poem
3. Christmas Trees - a man is asked to sell his forest of pine trees for three pennies a piece
4. Birches - oh to be young again to climb up and slide down a birch tree's pliant branches
5. Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening - a famous and contemplative short poem
6. New Hampshire - long poem about his home state detailing the pro's and con's. At times beautiful, at other times witty and sometimes cheeky.
7. Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter - another contemplative poem amidst a snowy forest
8. Canis Major - an ode to the overdog in the night sky
9. A Lone Striker - a man gives up on the chaos of modern life and work in the mill, saying to himself "They will know where to find me"
10. Peril of Hope - a possible early frost is coming to an apple orchard and it causes anxiety
4 stars
January 30, 2023
Just some great poems. He’s one of my go to nature poets and edge of darkness poets - I Am One Acquainted with the Night. I’ve written several poems in tribute to his art especially about fences. If you haven’t read much of him you should read more. He’s important for the spirit.
June 16, 2018
Frost have a very unique collection of poems that provide the readers with advice.
July 23, 2012
Reading this right after books of poetry by Coleridge and Shelley was a pleasure, even a relief. I don't hold "doth" and "lady fair" against poets such as Shakespeare and Donne--they seem to be using their own natural language. But I can't help roll my eyes at times at the romantic poets with their classical allusions and archaic language. They write of flowers and brooks as if it came from reading dusty volumes inside by a fire. Frost writes of nature as if from observing outside in the midst of it--with greater eloquence and sharpness of detail than Thoreau. And his voice is conversational, colloquial, as if he's speaking to you as a friend. And though he died before I was born, and started publishing poems before my grandmother was born, he doesn't feel dated. At the same time, he's not obscurist or dada-ish such as many modernist poets. He's not the verse equivalent of Jackson Pollock. Frost is quoted as saying that ""I would sooner write free verse as play tennis with the net down." Conversational his poetry might be, they do have structure.
He's not particularly prolific. From what I can gather from online sources, he only published about 130-odd poems in his lifetime. Compare that to the output of Emily Dickinson, along with Walt Whitman, the other American poet with a first-class world reputation--she wrote over 1,700. Each of Frost's poems is telling though and worth reading, and more varied than I expected. Yes, here you can find the familiar poems "Mending Wall," "The Road Not Traveled" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" "Birches" and "After Apple-Picking" that fit his persona as a New England Farmer poet. But there are also works such as "Home Burial" and "Death of a Hired Man" that read like short stories--works of Flash Fiction. (Home is the place where, when you have to go there/They have to take you in.). There are very short epigrammatic works of a couple of lines such as "Precaution." (I never dared be radical when young/For fear it would make me conservative when old.) There are works that treat of science and a few that deal with the political and philosophical. Particularly in retrospect after reading about his take on justice versus mercy in Milton's Paradise Lost in his letter to a friend, I found these lines in his verse play A Masque of Mercy very striking:
The rich in seeing nothing but injustice
In their impoverishment by revolution
Are right. But 'twas intentional injustice.
It was their justice being mercy-crossed.
The revolution Keeper's bring on
Is nothing but an outbreak of mass mercy,
Too long pent up in rigorous convention--
A holy impulse towards redistribution.
To set out to homogenize mankind
So that the cream could never rise again.
And as for science, one of my favorite Frost poems was supposedly inspired by his conversation with an astronomer about the end of the world--although there are also echoes of Dante:
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
There's something in the tone I just adore in this one. Irony? Whimsey? I don't know how to characterize it, except I found Frost's way at looking at so many things an unexpected pleasure in poem after poem I'd never read encountering Frost in anthologies or quoted here and there. So in content this is five stars--easily, which is why I rated it that way. Frost is a favorite poet. If I was tempted to mark the rating down, it's because I'm not sure if I had to do it over I'd buy this particular edition edited by Latham and Thompson. They say in their very brief introduction that the "texts... are allowed to speak for themselves" and that the "editors have deliberately avoided making interpretations." Certainly Frost is very accessible, but I would have liked a little value-added--more notes on the context and background. And listing the individual poems in the Table of Contents or an index of first lines would certainly have been welcome.
He's not particularly prolific. From what I can gather from online sources, he only published about 130-odd poems in his lifetime. Compare that to the output of Emily Dickinson, along with Walt Whitman, the other American poet with a first-class world reputation--she wrote over 1,700. Each of Frost's poems is telling though and worth reading, and more varied than I expected. Yes, here you can find the familiar poems "Mending Wall," "The Road Not Traveled" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" "Birches" and "After Apple-Picking" that fit his persona as a New England Farmer poet. But there are also works such as "Home Burial" and "Death of a Hired Man" that read like short stories--works of Flash Fiction. (Home is the place where, when you have to go there/They have to take you in.). There are very short epigrammatic works of a couple of lines such as "Precaution." (I never dared be radical when young/For fear it would make me conservative when old.) There are works that treat of science and a few that deal with the political and philosophical. Particularly in retrospect after reading about his take on justice versus mercy in Milton's Paradise Lost in his letter to a friend, I found these lines in his verse play A Masque of Mercy very striking:
The rich in seeing nothing but injustice
In their impoverishment by revolution
Are right. But 'twas intentional injustice.
It was their justice being mercy-crossed.
The revolution Keeper's bring on
Is nothing but an outbreak of mass mercy,
Too long pent up in rigorous convention--
A holy impulse towards redistribution.
To set out to homogenize mankind
So that the cream could never rise again.
And as for science, one of my favorite Frost poems was supposedly inspired by his conversation with an astronomer about the end of the world--although there are also echoes of Dante:
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
There's something in the tone I just adore in this one. Irony? Whimsey? I don't know how to characterize it, except I found Frost's way at looking at so many things an unexpected pleasure in poem after poem I'd never read encountering Frost in anthologies or quoted here and there. So in content this is five stars--easily, which is why I rated it that way. Frost is a favorite poet. If I was tempted to mark the rating down, it's because I'm not sure if I had to do it over I'd buy this particular edition edited by Latham and Thompson. They say in their very brief introduction that the "texts... are allowed to speak for themselves" and that the "editors have deliberately avoided making interpretations." Certainly Frost is very accessible, but I would have liked a little value-added--more notes on the context and background. And listing the individual poems in the Table of Contents or an index of first lines would certainly have been welcome.
December 3, 2013
Reading Frost is a wonder. His work has become so quoted in our culture that you'd think he'd be in danger of becoming cliche. He still transcends that. His icy scenes and wintry imagery show a mind so affixed to nature's quiet desolation; a soul-searcher firmly grounded in the soil he farms and fields he traverses, observing other lonely souls seeking shelter from frailty and encroaching infirmity. He's gruff, yet gentle; melancholic, yet stoic with a wry sense of humor. Nature inspires him, but unlike the English romantics, Wordsworth in particular, his intimations of mortality hint at darker themes (read "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and it's more than just misconstrued Hallmark sentiment). What I love about Library of America's edition of Frost is their inclusion of his lectures and essays about reading, literature, and poetics. I'm fascinated by how other writers and poets reflect on their craft and the artistic problems they face creating it. You get a generous sampling of that here along with some of the most original and universal poetry, next to Whitman and Dickinson, in the American canon.
Read
May 14, 2024My various thoughts on Robert Frost can be found here:
https://onhishead.wordpress.com/tag/r...
https://onhishead.wordpress.com/tag/r...
April 23, 2008
This is the perfect Frost book! What I like about this edition is that besides Frost's wonderful poetry, it also has a section of his prose. In addition, at the end of the book there is an interesting and useful chronology of the poet's life. It was interesting reading how Frost, when he was a young man, took over a school class. He had little tolerance for misbehaving students, and so he caned the worst offenders. Later on, their grudges having been well-nursed and cultivated, the "caned" students ganged up on Frost and beat him up.
I also learned in an Paris Review interview included in the book that Frost never wrote at a desk...
This beautifully bound book with acid free pages is the kind of book you want to buy and add to your permanent collection.
I also learned in an Paris Review interview included in the book that Frost never wrote at a desk...
This beautifully bound book with acid free pages is the kind of book you want to buy and add to your permanent collection.
January 29, 2008
Here's the thing. Most of this book really sucks. It's terrible. However, when it doesn't suck, it's beyond brilliant. Frost wrote more great poems than any other 20th century poet, I think, but he surrounded them with so much pedestrian crap that it's hard to find them sometimes. "Birches," "Mending Wall," "Out, Out," "After Apple Picking," and so on continue to stand up, reading after reading after reading. He handled form so lightly, so wittily, in these poems. He was plenty heavy-handed in others, but these and others are worth the price of the book. It's good also to see his own prose about poetry--insightful and quotable and you can learn from it.
June 10, 2023
This is about as complete of a collection of Robert Frost's works you can get so to say this book deserves 5 stars would be an understatement. Frost is easily one of the greatest poets of all time and will always be a giant in the world of poetry. His poetry also holds a special place in my heart for its thoughtful remarks on nature and what it means to be a human on this earth. His poems are universal and brilliantly crafted.
December 13, 2022
Robert Frost is one of the most celebrated American poets of the 20th century - likely one of the few American poets that a random American could name off the top of their head. Frost is a master of language, with a remarkable ability to craft poems that are both accessible and profound. His poems often deal with simple, everyday subjects, but they are imbued with a deep philosophical and emotional resonance. He is also noteworthy for its use of imagery and metaphor, including a knack for using vivid and evocative imagery to convey complex ideas and emotions. His metaphors are often surprising and powerful, and they help to give his poetry a timeless quality. An example of Frost's use of metaphor can be found in his poem "The Death of the Hired Man." In this poem, Frost uses the metaphor of a house to represent the relationship between the speaker and the hired man, Silas. The speaker of the poem is the owner of the house, and Silas is a hired hand who works on the farm. The poem begins:
In this stanza, Frost uses the metaphor of a house to represent the idea of acceptance and belonging. The speaker is saying that a home is a place where you are always welcome, regardless of whether or not you deserve it. The use of the metaphor allows Frost to explore the theme of love and forgiveness in a simple and powerful way.
Some of the most famous poems by Robert Frost include "The Road Not Taken," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Mending Wall," "Birches," "The Death of the Hired Man," "Fire and Ice," "The tuft of flowers," "After Apple-Picking," "The silken tent," and "Acquainted with the night."
Brief Biography
He was born in 1874 in San Francisco, and he grew up in New England. He attended Dartmouth College and Harvard University, but he did not graduate from either institution. Instead, he worked various jobs, including teaching and farming, before eventually making a living as a poet.
Frost's first book of poems, A Boy's Will, was published in 1913, and it was followed by a series of highly successful collections, including North of Boston (1914), Mountain Interval (1916), and New Hampshire (1923), which won him the Pulitzer Prize. Frost continued to write and publish throughout his life, and he was awarded three more Pulitzer Prizes for poetry.
Frost's poetry is influenced by a wide range of sources, including the Bible, English and American poetry, and his own experiences in rural New England. He was particularly drawn to the work of poets like William Shakespeare, John Keats, and Emily Dickinson. Frost's work also reflects his deep love of the natural world, and he often writes about the beauty and mystery of the outdoors.
An interesting and little remarked on tidbit about Frost was that he was a conservative and staunch individualist who supported the Republican Party and was a vocal critic of the New Deal. Although it is little recognized that many of the most influential American poets were on the political right (sometimes radically so).
Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays should be a mainstay for bookshelves in American households. I hope to see it our your shelf when I visit.
"Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.
I should have called it
Something you somehow haven't to deserve."
In this stanza, Frost uses the metaphor of a house to represent the idea of acceptance and belonging. The speaker is saying that a home is a place where you are always welcome, regardless of whether or not you deserve it. The use of the metaphor allows Frost to explore the theme of love and forgiveness in a simple and powerful way.
Some of the most famous poems by Robert Frost include "The Road Not Taken," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Mending Wall," "Birches," "The Death of the Hired Man," "Fire and Ice," "The tuft of flowers," "After Apple-Picking," "The silken tent," and "Acquainted with the night."
Brief Biography
He was born in 1874 in San Francisco, and he grew up in New England. He attended Dartmouth College and Harvard University, but he did not graduate from either institution. Instead, he worked various jobs, including teaching and farming, before eventually making a living as a poet.
Frost's first book of poems, A Boy's Will, was published in 1913, and it was followed by a series of highly successful collections, including North of Boston (1914), Mountain Interval (1916), and New Hampshire (1923), which won him the Pulitzer Prize. Frost continued to write and publish throughout his life, and he was awarded three more Pulitzer Prizes for poetry.
Frost's poetry is influenced by a wide range of sources, including the Bible, English and American poetry, and his own experiences in rural New England. He was particularly drawn to the work of poets like William Shakespeare, John Keats, and Emily Dickinson. Frost's work also reflects his deep love of the natural world, and he often writes about the beauty and mystery of the outdoors.
An interesting and little remarked on tidbit about Frost was that he was a conservative and staunch individualist who supported the Republican Party and was a vocal critic of the New Deal. Although it is little recognized that many of the most influential American poets were on the political right (sometimes radically so).
Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays should be a mainstay for bookshelves in American households. I hope to see it our your shelf when I visit.
December 31, 2019
I am not attempting to read this book (with more than 900 pages) all the way through at one time. Instead I'm reading one section at a time and I'll offer my opinions on each as I read them. I will add that the Library of America edition is nice collection. I highly recommend it to anyone with a serious interest in poetry.
North of Boston(1914) **** – This groundbreaking volume contains several of Frost’s most famous poems including Mending Wall, The Death of the Hired Hand, and The Wood Pile. What’s fascinating to me is his frequent use of dialogue in this set. Eight out of the 14 poems are dialogues between two or more people, and a few are dramatic monologues. During the height of Modernism, Frost’s poems are more like playlets – mini dramas – mostly written in blank verse with some, but little, narration. (02/2014)
Mountain Interval (1916)**** -- This is one of Frost's best books of poetry (not counting his anthologies). It includes many of his most famous poems including The Road Not Taken, An Old Man's Winter Night, The Oven Bird, Birches, and Out, Out, plus many other gems. It displays all of Frost's darkness and comedy. I highly recommend this selection. (03/2013)
New Hampshire (1923) **** This is another outstanding set of poems including the famous Fire and Ice, and Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening. It is classic Frost with his wry observations, odd rustic characters, and his conversation poems. Today, it seems like another world – 1923. Can you do something similar with our world of TVs and smartphones and cars. Other notable poems include The Ax-Helve and The Census Taker. And I love the conclusion of New Hampshire:
“It’s restful to arrive at a decision,
And result just to think about New Hampshire,
At present I am living in Vermont.” (12/2019)
North of Boston(1914) **** – This groundbreaking volume contains several of Frost’s most famous poems including Mending Wall, The Death of the Hired Hand, and The Wood Pile. What’s fascinating to me is his frequent use of dialogue in this set. Eight out of the 14 poems are dialogues between two or more people, and a few are dramatic monologues. During the height of Modernism, Frost’s poems are more like playlets – mini dramas – mostly written in blank verse with some, but little, narration. (02/2014)
Mountain Interval (1916)**** -- This is one of Frost's best books of poetry (not counting his anthologies). It includes many of his most famous poems including The Road Not Taken, An Old Man's Winter Night, The Oven Bird, Birches, and Out, Out, plus many other gems. It displays all of Frost's darkness and comedy. I highly recommend this selection. (03/2013)
New Hampshire (1923) **** This is another outstanding set of poems including the famous Fire and Ice, and Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening. It is classic Frost with his wry observations, odd rustic characters, and his conversation poems. Today, it seems like another world – 1923. Can you do something similar with our world of TVs and smartphones and cars. Other notable poems include The Ax-Helve and The Census Taker. And I love the conclusion of New Hampshire:
“It’s restful to arrive at a decision,
And result just to think about New Hampshire,
At present I am living in Vermont.” (12/2019)
February 1, 2010
I also read the Emerson and Whitman collections in this series. They are incredible. I really want to own them. As for Frost, he has the same impact on me a Whitman, that is the urge to lay naked in the snow or whatever other visceral, human experience I can come up with on short notice.
Check out Dream Pang:
I had withdrawn in forest, and my song
Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;
And to the forest edge you came one day
(This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,
But did not enter, though the wish was strong:
you shook your pensive head as who should say,
'I dare not -- too far in his footsteps stray --
He must seek me would he undo the wrong.'
Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all
behind low boughs the trees let down outside;
And the sweet pang it cost me not to call
And tell you that I saw does still abide.
But 'tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,
For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.
Check out Dream Pang:
I had withdrawn in forest, and my song
Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;
And to the forest edge you came one day
(This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,
But did not enter, though the wish was strong:
you shook your pensive head as who should say,
'I dare not -- too far in his footsteps stray --
He must seek me would he undo the wrong.'
Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all
behind low boughs the trees let down outside;
And the sweet pang it cost me not to call
And tell you that I saw does still abide.
But 'tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,
For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.
July 2, 2009
The Poetry of Robert Frost was really good. I've always been a fan of Robert Frost, but have only ever really read a few of his poems & when I read through all of his poems in this book, I started to really understand why they call him the American Poet (besides him actually being American). I just enjoyed the subject matters that he wrote about in his poetry & he wrote about things that the average person could relate too & you can tell through his writings the type of person he was, by all of who he was that he had put into his writings.
Really great poet & to my understanding really understood the idea of what writing is.
Really great poet & to my understanding really understood the idea of what writing is.
January 25, 2016
The Library of America editions are all treasure chests. They are not cheap, but they are the kind of book you'll be proud of owning. If you know someone who's into American Literature, get him a LoA edition of the works of a writer they like and they'll be happy as woodchucks (which are famously happy animals).
And Frost's poems are like cherries, although you find the occasional bitter one they are so delicious you just can't stop once you get started. One of the most enjoyable poets I've ever found on a mere "surface" level (not to mention when you go deeper).
And Frost's poems are like cherries, although you find the occasional bitter one they are so delicious you just can't stop once you get started. One of the most enjoyable poets I've ever found on a mere "surface" level (not to mention when you go deeper).
May 17, 2009
A wonderful collection of various works by Robert Frost, including an in-depth chronology of his life.
I like many, have read Frost's poetry countless times. However studying the chronology first, I obtained a deeper understanding and appreciation of his writings. I loved all this information bound together in one volume, definitely one for the personal library.
I like many, have read Frost's poetry countless times. However studying the chronology first, I obtained a deeper understanding and appreciation of his writings. I loved all this information bound together in one volume, definitely one for the personal library.
September 8, 2012
"The woods are lovely dark and deep and I have miles to go before I sleep." Frost strikes a perfect chord with me and this collection is the perfect treasure trove to which I go back again and again to find jewels to relish and share. This was my perfect companion during the 2011 xmas holidays.
September 8, 2015
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
February 21, 2010
Say that I have an on-going lover's quarrel with Robert Frost.
April 3, 2011
How does one respond to genius? The craft, the insight into the human condition. I go back to his poems again and again.
February 22, 2016
I love Frost's poetry. I enjoyed this book of his work.
April 5, 2024
"Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays" by Robert Frost is a timeless treasury that showcases the breadth and depth of the celebrated poet's work. This comprehensive hardcover edition brings together Frost's most renowned poems, insightful prose pieces, and engaging plays, offering readers a comprehensive glimpse into the mind of one of America's most beloved literary figures.
Frost's poetry is characterized by its lyrical beauty, keen observation of nature, and profound insights into the human condition. From the iconic "The Road Not Taken" to the contemplative "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," his poems continue to resonate with readers of all generations, inviting reflection on life, love, and the passage of time.
In addition to his poetry, this collection includes Frost's insightful prose writings, which offer valuable commentary on his creative process, philosophy, and approach to writing. From essays on poetic form to reflections on the art of teaching, Frost's prose pieces provide valuable insights into his literary legacy.
Finally, "Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays" also features Frost's lesser-known plays, which showcase his talent for dramatic storytelling and dialogue. These plays offer a glimpse into another facet of Frost's creative output, demonstrating his versatility as a writer across different genres.
Overall, "Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays" is a must-have addition to any literary enthusiast's library. With its comprehensive selection of Frost's work, stunning hardcover design, and insightful commentary, this edition is sure to delight readers and serve as a timeless tribute to the enduring legacy of one of America's greatest poets.
Frost's poetry is characterized by its lyrical beauty, keen observation of nature, and profound insights into the human condition. From the iconic "The Road Not Taken" to the contemplative "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," his poems continue to resonate with readers of all generations, inviting reflection on life, love, and the passage of time.
In addition to his poetry, this collection includes Frost's insightful prose writings, which offer valuable commentary on his creative process, philosophy, and approach to writing. From essays on poetic form to reflections on the art of teaching, Frost's prose pieces provide valuable insights into his literary legacy.
Finally, "Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays" also features Frost's lesser-known plays, which showcase his talent for dramatic storytelling and dialogue. These plays offer a glimpse into another facet of Frost's creative output, demonstrating his versatility as a writer across different genres.
Overall, "Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays" is a must-have addition to any literary enthusiast's library. With its comprehensive selection of Frost's work, stunning hardcover design, and insightful commentary, this edition is sure to delight readers and serve as a timeless tribute to the enduring legacy of one of America's greatest poets.
March 20, 2024
Bond and Free
Love has earth to which she clings
With hills and circling arms about
Wall within wall to shut fear out.
But Thought has need of no such things,
For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings
On snow and sand and turf, I see
Where Love has left a printed trace
With straining in the world's embrace.
And such is Love and glad to be.
But Thought has shaken his ankles free.
Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom
And sits in Sirius' disc all night,
Till day makes him retrace his flight,
With smell of burning on every plume,
Back past the sun to an earthly room.
His gains in heaven are what they are.
Yet some say Love by being thrall
And simply staying possesses all
In several beauty that Thought fares far
To find fused in another star.
- Robert Frost
Love has earth to which she clings
With hills and circling arms about
Wall within wall to shut fear out.
But Thought has need of no such things,
For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings
On snow and sand and turf, I see
Where Love has left a printed trace
With straining in the world's embrace.
And such is Love and glad to be.
But Thought has shaken his ankles free.
Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom
And sits in Sirius' disc all night,
Till day makes him retrace his flight,
With smell of burning on every plume,
Back past the sun to an earthly room.
His gains in heaven are what they are.
Yet some say Love by being thrall
And simply staying possesses all
In several beauty that Thought fares far
To find fused in another star.
- Robert Frost
February 13, 2017
I read this during a visit to rural Vermont, near to where Frost lived and was buried, surrounded by the natural world of New England that he so often wrote about. To immerse myself in his work and life was fortunate indeed. I came to love his poetry, and his
I suspected there was something deeper in Frost than the cursory readings of his most-loved poems. There certainly is. (I can recommend the three lectures on Frost from the 'Great Courses' course on 20th Century American literature, delivered by the inestimable Arnold Weinstein.) Something darker, more complex. His aesthetic is interesting too, as outlined in the 'prose' section of this beautiful book.
I suspected there was something deeper in Frost than the cursory readings of his most-loved poems. There certainly is. (I can recommend the three lectures on Frost from the 'Great Courses' course on 20th Century American literature, delivered by the inestimable Arnold Weinstein.) Something darker, more complex. His aesthetic is interesting too, as outlined in the 'prose' section of this beautiful book.
August 11, 2020
Bought this volume several years back. So glad to have accomplished during the COVID-19 pandemic the reading of all of Robert Frost's poems. I knew many. Discovered many more. Even had the rare treat to read the last section of the 562 pages which is titled "uncollected". Here I believe meaning never presented as an individual book of his poems. Maybe poems he never quite finished or were in magazine or newspapers articles? Some interesting ones there.
There are two more sections in this book: one on prose and another on plays. I am finished for now. Maybe some other time I will read them or not. Good read!
There are two more sections in this book: one on prose and another on plays. I am finished for now. Maybe some other time I will read them or not. Good read!
May 22, 2021
The Frost poems I read in primary school are still some of my favorites: Mending Wall, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and The Road Not Taken. In this collection of essentially all the poetry he wrote, I discovered Reluctance, The Star-Splitter, The Door in the Dark and many other gems. Born in San Francisco, Frost wrote many poems that defined New England. I enjoyed Pride of Ancestry in his Uncollected Poems for its bawdy story: “The Deacon’s wife was a bit desirish/ And liked her sex relations wild/ So she lay with one of the shanty Irish/ And he begot the Deacon’s child.” Five more delightfully comic stanzas follow. Who says poetry isn’t entertaining?
May 5, 2023
It's all here. All of it, except maybe a few that he mentions he kept or considered failures. Besides the obvious, I found myself beginning to understand Frost and poets in general that were his contemporaries. Yes. I avoided literature classes in school whenever possible and especially ones that spent time on poetry. So this is my first real introduction to Frost and poetry of that period in general. Good reading that requires more time than I had anticipated.
April 1, 2020
Pretty exhaustive, I think it would have been more interesting if all the works were arranged chronologically rather than chronologically by type. Be prepared to be disappointed in some of his views, he was born in 1874 and while ahead of his time in some ways he was a product of it in many others.
November 25, 2018
Frost have a very unique collection of poems that provide the readers with advice.
May 28, 2020
Frost & Wendell Berry are two of my favorite poets.
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