Tenth Generation9585. Robert Lee FROST was born on 26 March 1874 in San Francisco, San Francisco, California.159 He died on 29 January 1963 at the age of 88 in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts.159 He was buried after 29 January 1963 at Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Bennington, Vermont.159 Robert had a U. S. postage stamp issued in his honor on 26 March 1974.2725 It marked the Centenary of his birth. American poet, one of the finest of rural New England's 20th century pastoral poets. Frost published his first books in Great Britain in the 1910s, but he soon became in his own country the most read and constantly anthologized poet, whose work was made familiar in classrooms and lecture platforms. Frost was awarded the Pulitzer Prize four times. Nature and rural surroundings became for Frost a source for insights into deeper design of life. He once said: "Literature begins with geography." FIRE AND ICE Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California. His father, a journalist and local politician, died when Frost was eleven years old. His Scottish mother resumed her career as a schoolteacher to support her family. The family lived in Lawrence, Massachusetts, with Frost's paternal grandfather. In 1892 Frost graduated from a high school and attended Darthmouth College for a few months. Over the next ten years he held a number of jobs. Frost worked among others in a textile mill and taught Latin at his mother's school in Methuen, Massachusetts. In 1894 the New York Independent published Frost's poem 'My Butterfly' and he had five poems privately printed. In 1895 he married a former schoolmate, Elinor White; they had six children. Frost worked as a teacher and continued to write and publish his poems in magazines. From 1897 to 1899 Frost studied at Harvard, but left without receiving a degree. He moved to Derry, New Hampshire, working there as a cobbler, farmer, and teacher at Pinkerton Academy and at the state normal school in Plymouth. "He moves in darkness as it seems to me, In 1912 Frost sold his farm and took his wife and four young children to England. There he published his first collection of poems, A BOY'S WILL, at the age of 39. It was followed by NORTH BOSTON (1914), which gained international reputation. The collection contains some of Frost's best-known poems: 'Mending Wall,' 'The Death of the Hired Man, ' 'Home Burial,' 'A Servant to Servants,' 'After Apple-Picking,' and 'The Wood-Pile.' The poems, written with blank verse or looser free verse of dialogue, were drawn from his own life, recurrent losses, everyday tasks, and his loneliness. While in England Frost was deeply influenced by such English poets as Rupert Brooke. After returning to the US in 1915 with his family, Frost bought a farm near Franconia, New Hampshire. He taught later at Amherst College (1916-38) and Michigan universities. In 1916 Frost was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. On the same year appeared his third collection of verse, MOUNTAIN INTERVAL, which contained such poems as 'The Road Not Taken,' 'The Oven Bird,' 'Birches,' and 'The Hill Wife.' Frost's poems show deep appreciation of natural world and sensibility about the human aspirations. His images - woods, stars, houses, brooks, - are usually taken from everyday life. With his down-to-earth approach to his subjects, readers found it is easy to follow the poet into deeper truths, without being burdened with pedantry. Often Frost used the rhythms and vocabulary of ordinary speech or even the looser free verse of dialogue. I shall be telling this with a sigh In 1920 Frost purchased a farm in South Shaftsbury, Vermont, near Middlebury College where he cofounded the Bread Loaf School and Conference of English. His wife died in 1938 and he lost four of his children. Two of his daughters suffered mental breakdowns, and his son Carol, a frustrated poet and farmer, committed suicide. Frost also suffered from depression and the continual self-doubt led him to cling to the desire to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. After the death of his wife, Frost became strongly attracted to Kay Morrison, whom he employed as his secretary and adviser. Frost also composed for her one of his finest love poems, 'A Witness Tree.' Frost travelled in 1957 with his future biographer Lawrance Thompson to England and to Israel and Greece in 1961. He participated in the inauguration of President John Kennedy in 1961 by reciting two of his poems, 'Dedication' and 'The Gift Outright.' He travelled in 1962 in the Soviet Union as a member of a goodwill group. Among the honors and rewards Frost received were tributes from the U.S. Senate (1950), the American Academy of Poets (1953), New York University (1956), and the Huntington Hartford Foundation (1958), the Congressional Gold Medal (1962), the Edward MacDowell Medal (1962). In 1930 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Amherst College appointed him Saimpson Lecturer for Life (1949), and in 1958 he was made poetry consultant for the Library of Congress. At the time of his death on January 29, 1963, Frost was considered a kind of unofficial poet laureate of the US. "I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world," Frost once said. In his poems Frost depicted the fields and farms of his surroundings, observing the details of rural life, which hide universal meaning. His independent, elusive, half humorous view of the world produced such remarks as "I never take my side in a quarrel", or "I'm never serious except when I'm fooling." Although Frost's works were generally praised, the lack of seriousness concerning social and political problems of the 1930s annoyed some more socially orientated critics. Later biographers have created a complex and contradictory portrait of the poet. In Lawrance Thompson's humorless, three-volume official biography (1966-1976) Frost was presented as a misanthrope, anti-intellectual, cruel, and angry man, but in Jay Parini's work (1999) he was again viewed with sympathy: ''He was a loner who liked company; a poet of isolation who sought a mass audience; a rebel who sought to fit in. Although a family man to the core, he frequently felt alienated from his wife and children and withdrew into reveries. While preferring to stay at home, he traveled more than any poet of his generation to give lectures and readings, even though he remained terrified of public speaking to the end..." For further reading: The Poetry of Robert Frost by R.A. Brower (1960); Robert Frost by P.L. Gerber (1966, rev. ed. 1982); Frost by E. Jennings (1966); Robert Frost: The Early Years, 1874-1915 by L. Thompson (1966); Robert Frost: The Years of Triump, 1915-1938 by L. Thompson (1970); Robert Frost by E. Barry (1973); Robert Frost: The Later Years, 1938-1963 by L. Thompson and R.H. Winnick (1976); Robert Frost and New England by J.C. Kemp (1979); Robert Frost Handbook by J.L. Potter (1980); Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered W.H. Pritchard (1984); Robert Frost Himself by Stanley Burnshaw (1986); A Restless Spirit: The Story of Robert Frost by N. Bober (1991); The Poetry of Robert Frost by J.R. Doyle Jr. (1991); The Poems of Robert Frost by M. Narcus (1991); Robert Frost: A Biography by Jeffrey Meyers (1996); Robert Frost: A Life by Jay Parini (1999) - - For further information: Robert Lee Frost - SEE Joseph Brodsky, who mentioned Robert Frost in his Nobel Award speech. See also English poet Robert Browning (1812-89), whose works have connections with Frost's monologues. Selected works: A BOY'S WILL, 1913 For more information, visit: Robert Lee FROST and Elinor Miriam WHITE were married on 19 December 1895 in Lawrence, Essex, Massachusetts.1863 They had six children. Elinor Miriam WHITE was born on 25 October 1873.2726 She died of a heart attack on 20 March 1938 at the age of 64.1863 Robert Lee FROST-27615 and Elinor Miriam WHITE-27616 had the following children:
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