Rating: 
Summary: Frost is cold
Review: This is not a review of this particular edition of Frost's poems. Nor is it a review of the entire corpus of Frost's work. Rather it is a few thoughts about Frost as a poet.
Frost is a poet American schoolchildren meet early. Thus "Whose woods these are I think I know/ His house is in the village thought. and " The Road Not Taken" and " Good fences make good neighbors" and" The land was ours before we were the land's" are all titles, lines which have remained in mind from an early age. They are the poetry which we having memorized young remains forever a part of us. Thus there are Frost lines in me , and I do not deny this.
Frost nonetheless despite my having read quite a bit of his poetry, and recognized its clear and high quality has never become a great favorite of mine. Why ? It may have to do with a certain fierce coldness I feel in him ( Some will die in fire , and some in Ice) Frost is in short for me a poet whose work is admired but not deeply loved. This connects too with my sense of who Frost himself was, his great ambition and according to his biographer Laurence Thompson great cruelty. Frost in my feeling lacks some redemptive quality which would lift him into the realm of Hopkins or Stevens.
This does not mean that he is not a very good or perhaps even great poet. It means only I find him distant his birches swinging for others somewhat remotely closer , perhaps, the stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Amateurish audio production
Review: This tape is poorly done. The tape quality is bad, and the production is cluttered with music and other background noise. Some of the readings are too fast, and some of the voices aren't very pleasant to listen to. No index is provided, so you have to listen to the tape if you want to know what's on it, and you have no way of knowing who's reading what. This is annoying if you want to read along with the audio.If you buy this, buy the audio download instead of the tape. Audible.com cleaned it up considerably. One nice feature is that if you burn this onto a CD, each poem is on a separate track, as is done with songs on a music CD, except for a few longer pieces that run over to a second track. For the record, there are 50 poems in this production. All but 2 of them, "Asking For Roses" and "Spoils Of the Dead," are in the print book by the same title.
Rating:
Summary: Amateurish audio production
Review: This tape is poorly done. The tape quality is bad, and the production is cluttered with music and other background noise. Some of the readings are too fast, and some of the voices aren't very pleasant to listen to. No index is provided, so you have to listen to the tape if you want to know what's on it, and you have no way of knowing who's reading what. This is annoying if you want to read along with the audio. If you buy this, buy the audio download instead of the tape. Audible.com cleaned it up considerably. One nice feature is that if you burn this onto a CD, each poem is on a separate track, as is done with songs on a music CD, except for a few longer pieces that run over to a second track. For the record, there are 50 poems in this production. All but 2 of them, "Asking For Roses" and "Spoils Of the Dead," are in the print book by the same title.
Rating:
Summary: Poetry for the common man
Review: What can I say? Robert Frost is the quintessential American poet. Quite frankly, I never have really been drawn to poetry, either it is overly sentimental, too dramatic, or tries to hard to make a statement. Frost avoids all of these pitfalls, he writes poetry for the common man. I have to admit, I prefer the earlier works. Beautiful word pictures of an abandoned wood pile in the woods, a dirty patch of snow (or is it a piece of newspaper), and of course, a horse stopping by the woods on a snowy evening. His latter poems lack the beautiful simplicity of his earlier works, but nevertheless, they are still works of the master. Over the years, this book has been a constant companion. Sitting in my wingback chair, I have enjoyed reading these poems again and again. As I prepared for this review I was struck how many of these poems dealt with death: The Death of the Hired Man, After Apple Picking, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, A Late Walk among them. Others are fanciful such as The Kitchen Chimney. If you are considering taking a dive into poetry, start here. There is no better American poet than Robert Frost.
Rating:
Summary: Poetry for the common man
Review: What can I say? Robert Frost is the quintessential American poet. Quite frankly, I never have really been drawn to poetry, either it is overly sentimental, too dramatic, or tries to hard to make a statement. Frost avoids all of these pitfalls, he writes poetry for the common man. I have to admit, I prefer the earlier works. Beautiful word pictures of an abandoned wood pile in the woods, a dirty patch of snow (or is it a piece of newspaper), and of course, a horse stopping by the woods on a snowy evening. His latter poems lack the beautiful simplicity of his earlier works, but nevertheless, they are still works of the master. Over the years, this book has been a constant companion. Sitting in my wingback chair, I have enjoyed reading these poems again and again. As I prepared for this review I was struck how many of these poems dealt with death: The Death of the Hired Man, After Apple Picking, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, A Late Walk among them. Others are fanciful such as The Kitchen Chimney. If you are considering taking a dive into poetry, start here. There is no better American poet than Robert Frost.
| 
