{"id":17453,"date":"2023-11-09T15:22:33","date_gmt":"2023-11-09T23:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/?p=17453"},"modified":"2023-12-19T12:10:11","modified_gmt":"2023-12-19T20:10:11","slug":"lasting-appeal-of-robert-frost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/stories\/lasting-appeal-of-robert-frost\/","title":{"rendered":"Steeped in tragedy, Robert Frost\u2019s poetry maintains a lasting appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n    \n                                \n\n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--article-hero \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--article-hero\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n<div class=\"inner-wrapper\">\n          \n<div class=\"f--field f--image\">\n\n    \n    \n    \n    \n    \n    \n              \n      <img\n                            data-src=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2023\/11\/frost_centenary_top-768x432.png\"\n          data-srcset=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2023\/11\/frost_centenary_top-1920x1080.png 1920w,https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2023\/11\/frost_centenary_top-1280x720.png 1280w,https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2023\/11\/frost_centenary_top-768x432.png 768w\"          data-sizes=\"(min-width:1200px) 75vw, (min-width:768px) 83vw, 100vw\"          class=\"lazyload\"\n        \n                  role=\"none\"\n        \n        \n                                      \/>\n\n    \n    \n  \n  \n\n<\/div>\n  \n      <div class=\"image-caption\">\n          \n<div class=\"f--field f--description\">\n\n    \n  Treasured American poet Robert Frost received numerous accolades in his lifetime, including the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960. (Image source: Library of Congress\/Walter Albertin.)\n\n\n<\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  \n  <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n          <nav aria-label=\"Breadcrumb\" class=\"breadcrumbs\">\n        <ul>\n                      <li><a href=\"\/news\/stories\/\">News<\/a><\/li>\n                      <li><a href=\"\/news\/stories\/\/?category=arts-and-culture\">Arts and Culture<\/a><\/li>\n                  <\/ul>\n      <\/nav>\n    \n              \n<div class=\"f--field f--page-title\">\n\n    \n  <h1>Steeped in tragedy, Robert Frost\u2019s poetry maintains a lasting appeal<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n    \n          <div class=\"subtitle\">\n            \n<div class=\"f--field f--description\">\n\n    \n  Frost\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection <em>New Hampshire<\/em> celebrates its centenary this year, and scholars say we may be remembering the poet all wrong.\n\n\n<\/div>\n      <\/div>\n    \n           <strong class=\"author-field\"><span >By<\/span><a href=\"mailto:communication@dornsife.usc.edu\">Margaret Crable<\/a><\/strong>\n    \n          <span class=\"post-date-field\">November 9, 2023<\/span>\n      <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n  <\/div><\/div>\n\n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--social-share \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--social-share\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n  <div class=\"content-wrapper\">\n    <span class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list\" style=\"line-height: 32px;\">\n      <span class=\"title\">\n        Share\n      <\/span>\n                        <a class=\"a2a_button_copy_link\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"\/#copy_link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"Link\">\n            <span class=\"a2a_svg a2a_s__default a2a_s_copy_link\">\n              <svg height=\"19\" viewBox=\"0 0 19 19\" width=\"19\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\"><path d=\"m7.43475275 9.52380952-2.17490843 2.26076008c-1.08745421 1.058837-1.68841575 2.518315-1.68841575 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xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\"><path d=\"m8.14285714 9.42857143c-.17142857 0-.34285714 0-.51428571.08571428l7.28571427 6.34285719c.3428572.2571428.6857143.2571428.9428572 0l7.2857142-6.34285719c-.0857142-.08571428-.2571428-.08571428-.4285714-.08571428zm-1.28571428 1.11428567v.1714286 8.5714286c0 .6857143.6 1.2857143 1.28571428 1.2857143h14.57142856c.6857143 0 1.2857143-.6 1.2857143-1.2857143v-8.5714286c0-.0857143 0-.0857143 0-.1714286l-7.2 6.3428572c-.7714286.6857143-1.8857143.6857143-2.6571429 0z\" fill-rule=\"evenodd\" transform=\"translate(-6 -9)\"\/><\/svg>\n            <\/span>\n            <span class=\"a2a_label visually-hidden\">Email<\/span>\n          <\/a>\n                  <\/span>\n  <\/div>\n\n  <\/div><\/div>\n \n\n\n\n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--rich-text \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--rich-text\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n      \n<div class=\"f--field f--wysiwyg\">\n\n    \n  <p>At Robert Frost\u2019s 85th birthday party at New York\u2019s Waldorf-Astoria hotel in 1959, critic Lionel Trilling toasted the poet by declaring his work \u201cterrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This description may surprise most Americans, who nowadays are largely familiar with Frost through folksy fragments of his poems. One hundred years after the publication of his poem <a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems\/42891\/stopping-by-woods-on-a-snowy-evening\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cStopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening\u201d<\/a> in the collection <em>New Hampshire<\/em>, which won him the first of four Pulitzer Prizes, shoppers can frequently find the poem\u2019s closing lines \u2014 \u201cAnd miles to go before I sleep\u201d \u2014 adorning a variety of mundane merchandise.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_17456\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17456\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-17456\" src=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2023\/11\/frost_centenary_instoryc-500x319.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"319\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2023\/11\/frost_centenary_instoryc-500x319.png 500w, https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2023\/11\/frost_centenary_instoryc-768x491.png 768w, https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2023\/11\/frost_centenary_instoryc.png 980w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-17456\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">USC Dornsife scholar Enrique Mart\u00ednez Celaya\u2019s art studio features a portrait of Robert Frost and his son Carol Frost displayed with apples taken from Carol\u2019s orchard. (Photo: Enrique Mart\u00ednez Celaya.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The fact that he endures at all is a considerable feat, given that most of his contemporaries are read only in small numbers, if at all. Frost\u2019s public stamina owes much to a masterful simplicity and a rugged pastoralism, which keeps him relevant even in modern times. Tragedy also plays a role, however, say scholars at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnyone who has carefully read poems like \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems\/53086\/home-burial\" target=\"_blank\">Home Burial<\/a>\u201c or \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems\/53087\/out-out\" target=\"_blank\">Out, Out<\/a>\u201c \u2014 or almost any other poem by Frost \u2014 should recognize the terror in his poetry. And if they did, they would be less inclined to use fragments of his poems or aspects of his life as propaganda,\u201d says Provost Professor of Humanities and Arts <a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/profile\/enrique-martinez-celaya\/\">Enrique Mart\u00ednez Celaya<\/a>, whose art studio includes a photo of Frost with his son Carol Frost, accompanied by a pair of apples from Carol\u2019s orchard.<\/p>\n<h2>Disarmingly simple<\/h2>\n<p>One factor in Frost\u2019s popularity has certainly been his accessibility. A reader doesn\u2019t require an advanced vocabulary or a profound grasp of world events to make sense of most of his poems.<\/p>\n<p>This has afforded him a broader appeal than, say, Ezra Pound, a Frost contemporary whose poetry is littered with Chinese characters or references to obscure histories. Frost can be read and enjoyed equally no matter a person\u2019s level of education.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s an approach that many Americans, who rarely respond well to affected airs, find appealing. \u201cHis poems engage with the reader directly, without any sense of hierarchy, reflecting American egalitarian ideals,\u201d says Mart\u00ednez Celaya.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Frost had one of the most tragic lives of any American poet, and all of this is running through his poetry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yet, simplicity doesn\u2019t mean a lack of depth. Subsequent readings of a Frost poem reveal more beneath the initial understanding. The famed lines from his \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems\/44272\/the-road-not-taken\" target=\"_blank\">The Road Not Taken<\/a>\u201d \u2014 \u201cI took the one less traveled by \/ And that has made all the difference\u201d \u2014 are often recited as a cheerful celebration of individuality. Yet, a deeper read of the whole poem reveals that it is, perhaps, a more cautionary contemplation of the ramifications of choice-making.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany poems and artworks seem complex and unfamiliar at first, but as we get to know them, they become more graspable and familiar, and they lose their power,\u201d says Mart\u00ednez Celaya, who has been reading Frost since he was a teen. \u201cIn contrast, Frost\u2019s poems appear simple and immediate at the outset but become larger, more haunting and more enigmatic as we spend time with them.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Robert Frost as poet pastoralist<\/h2>\n<p>Frost\u2019s pared-down style was due in part to his adulthood spent on farms in New Hampshire and Vermont. \u201cHis simplicity arises from living a restrained life in New England, living with only what you need, primarily dependent on two things: a pencil and an ax,\u201d says <a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/profile\/mark-irwin\/\">Mark Irwin<\/a>, professor of <a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/engl\/\">English<\/a> at USC Dornsife.<\/p>\n<p>This ruralism also lends to his appeal. It made him relatable to small-town America, a section of the populace often ignored by the literary establishment. His poems are filled with references to the natural world and country life, like his poem on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepoetryhour.com\/poems\/after-apple-picking\" target=\"_blank\">apple-picking<\/a>, which seem just as relatable now as they were 100 years ago.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_17455\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17455\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-17455\" src=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2023\/11\/frost_centenary_instoryd-500x319.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"319\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2023\/11\/frost_centenary_instoryd-500x319.png 500w, https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2023\/11\/frost_centenary_instoryd-768x491.png 768w, https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2023\/11\/frost_centenary_instoryd.png 980w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-17455\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Frost spent much of his adult life in rural New Hampshire among picturesque views like this one of North Moat Mountain captured by painter Benjamin Champney in 1873. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Some of this bucolic reputation obscures Frost\u2019s actual history. Frost was born in San Francisco, Calif., grew up in the city and attended Harvard and Dartmouth (although he never graduated). His earliest success didn\u2019t arise in New England but in Europe.<\/p>\n<p>In 1912, approaching the age of 40 with few published poems, Frost sailed with his wife and children to England to try and relaunch his career. The gamble worked, generating connections and publications which that helped him gain attention back home in America, where he returned in 1915.<\/p>\n<p>If Frost wasn\u2019t all homespun farmer, Americans didn\u2019t mind. We have a fondness for those who shape a somewhat mythic personal character, like Theodore Roosevelt posing in buckskin. Frost genuinely did live a mostly rural life where in which he produced masterful work across six decades. At 86, he composed new work and read aloud a poem for the inauguration of John F. Kennedy Jr.<\/p>\n<p>His work ethic seemed to call to mind earlier generations of Americans, says Irwin. \u201cHe lived a tough life in the woods, working on his craft. It was a toughness that allows you to survive, the way pilgrims and the homesteaders had to be tough just to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>First as tragedy, then as poetry<\/h2>\n<p>This toughness perhaps stemmed partly from Frost\u2019s personal misfortunes, which were plentiful. \u201cFrost had one of the most tragic lives of any American poet, and all of this is running through his poetry,\u201d says Irwin.<\/p>\n<p>Frost\u2019s father died when Frost was a boy. Two of his children died in childhood. His sister and a daughter were committed to mental institutions. His son Carol committed suicide. His wife Elinor first developed breast cancer, then died of heart disease. He\u2019d go on to outlive her by nearly 30 years.<\/p>\n<p>Such knowledge can illuminate a poem like <em>New Hampshire\u2019s<\/em> \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/poets.org\/poem\/nothing-gold-can-stay\" target=\"_blank\">Nothing Gold Can Stay<\/a>,\u201d which is often interpreted as a musing on the fleetingness of youth. In light of Frost\u2019s history, it could also depict how the joys of life are inevitably, cruelly, followed by crushing loss.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>His simplicity arises from living a restrained life in New England, living with only what you need, primarily dependent on two things: a pencil and an ax.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>His probing of tragedy meshes well with America\u2019s own ruminations, in which feats of great accomplishment must be squared with darker legacies of slavery and Westward expansion. The poem Frost read at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy Jr., \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jfklibrary.org\/learn\/about-jfk\/life-of-john-f-kennedy\/fast-facts-john-f-kennedy\/the-gift-outright-by-robert-frost\" target=\"_blank\">The Gift Outright<\/a>,\u201d which at first glance might read as an approving ode to America\u2019s settler past, has a deeper, tragic edge upon subsequent analysis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany of his poems center on the idea that humans are fundamentally and sometimes irreparably flawed. When they aren\u2019t personally flawed, they suffer from the flaws of others or the unpredictability of an indifferent universe. Still, they often persist in life, even when surrender might appear the logical choice,\u201d says Mart\u00ednez Celaya.<\/p>\n<p>Frost\u2019s lifelong battle with the \u201cslings and arrows\u201d of fate endures even on his headstone, which reads, \u201cI had a lover\u2019s quarrel with the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n  <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n  \n        \n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--article-related-stories \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--article-related-stories\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n  <div class=\"inner-wrapper\">\n              \n<div class=\"f--field f--section-title\">\n\n    \n  <h2>\n          Related Articles\n      <\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n    \n                  <article>\n              \n<div class=\"f--field f--cta-title\">\n\n    \n  <h3>\n          <a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/stories\/marjorie-perloff-leading-poetry-scholar-dies\/\" \n                        class=\"\" \n     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<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Frost\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection New Hampshire celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, and scholars say we may be remembering the poet all wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":17454,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[74,75,140],"class_list":["post-17453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","tag-english","tag-humanities","tag-poetry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Steeped in tragedy, Robert Frost\u2019s poetry maintains a lasting appeal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As the Pulitzer Prize-winning \u201cNew Hampshire\u201d by Robert Frost celebrates 100 years, scholars say we may be remembering the poet all wrong.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/stories\/lasting-appeal-of-robert-frost\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Steeped in tragedy, Robert Frost\u2019s poetry holds a lasting appeal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As the Pulitzer Prize-winning \u201cNew Hampshire\u201d by Robert Frost celebrates 100 years, scholars say we may be remembering the poet all wrong.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/stories\/lasting-appeal-of-robert-frost\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"USC Dornsife News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" 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