Robert Frost

1874–1963 · United States

Plain New England surfaces over genuinely dark water.

Frost farmed unsuccessfully in New Hampshire, moved to England, and published his first two books there before returning to America as a recognised poet.

He became a national figure, reading at a presidential inauguration in 1961 — a public role that flattened his reputation into folksiness and obscured how bleak his best poems are.

Style

Traditional metre spoken in ordinary conversational syntax — what he called 'the sound of sense'.
Rural scenes used as arenas for choice, isolation and moral doubt.
Endings that appear to resolve while quietly withholding resolution.