Portrait of Robert Frost
Meet the Author

Robert Frost

American · 1874–1963 · Poet

Portrait: Fred Palumbo, World Telegram staff photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A New England poet who used plain talk and strict meter to write about farms, woods, and choices, and who won four Pulitzer Prizes.

8 StoryBites Editions8 Poems
Start with Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening → Browse the editions

Why read Robert Frost?

Frost’s poems sound like a neighbor talking, but the meter underneath is exact, and the plain surface usually hides a harder thought. Mending Wall and Birches are longer blank-verse poems, one about two neighbors repairing a stone wall and one about a boy swinging on birch trees, Out, Out— tells of a boy’s accident with a buzz saw in a few dozen lines, and The Road Not Taken is famous partly for being misread as simple advice. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Nothing Gold Can Stay, Fire and Ice, and Acquainted with the Night are short enough to learn by heart, and each turns on a single image. Read them aloud to hear how the rhythm carries the meaning.

A life in six dates

  1. 1874Born in San Francisco
  2. 1885After his father’s death, moves with his mother and sister to Massachusetts
  3. 1913Publishes his first book, A Boy’s Will, in London, after moving his family to England
  4. 1914Publishes North of Boston, which includes Mending Wall
  5. 1916Publishes Mountain Interval, with The Road Not Taken and Birches
  6. 1924Wins the first of his four Pulitzer Prizes, for New Hampshire
  7. 1961Recites a poem at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy
  8. 1963Dies in Boston

Themes across the collection

PoetryAmerican literatureNatureChildhoodDeathTimeSolitudeBoundariesTradition

The StoryBites Editions

Context that actually matters

New England farm countryFrost farmed in Derry, New Hampshire, in the early 1900s, and stone walls, orchards, birch woods, and hard winters give his poems their settings and much of their vocabulary.
England and Edward ThomasLiving in England from 1912 to 1915, Frost became close friends with the poet Edward Thomas, and he later said The Road Not Taken grew partly from teasing Thomas about regretting whichever path they had not taken on their walks.
Meter and formFrost kept to regular meter and rhyme when many modern poets were dropping them, and he liked the pull between a fixed rhythm and the looser tones of ordinary speech.