Robert Frost: A Life

Rating:
Summary: A poet's perspective.
Review: Jay Parini bring's a poet's perspective to this excellent biography. By combining a compelling look at Frost's life with an informed commentary on his poetry, Parini has avoided the common pitfall of many biographers; forgetting the work while describing the life. I feel I now have a much greater understanding of the man and his work after reading this book which should be the goal of all biographies and so rarely is.

Rating:
Summary: A balanced view of a teacher, poet, friend, and family man.
Review: Jay Parini's well-written and well-organized life of Robert Frost weaves together beautifully the many contradictory Frosts: the spiteful yet respectful colleague, the insensitive yet devoted husband, the domineering yet supportive father, the bullying yet challenging teacher. What we have as a result is a definitive picture of one of our country's greatest poets as a three-dimensional human being, a man of great passions and great talent. As if that weren't good enough, Parini does a magnificent job of showing how many of Frost's best poems fit into periods of his life, how they often reflect his successes and failures, his dreams and his fears. In brief, this is a superlative biography, a must read for anyone curious about the life of this powerful and important poet!

Rating:
Summary: Robert Frost: A Man and his Poems
Review: One of my first memories of Robert Frost is watching him attempting to read a poem he had written for John F. Kennedy's Presidential Inauguration. Struggling with the bright sunlight reflecting off the fresh snow on that crisp winter's day, he abandoned his effort to recite an older poem from memory.

I remember thinking the image of this short, stocky white-haired old man was as close to a wood nymph as I would ever come. Later, I was to learn that Frost lead anything but a simple life. Biographer drawing on this image, often sensationalized the details of his life at the expense of the precious poetry he created.

Jay Parini, the Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College, does not travel that path. Rather, he provides his readers with insight into how Frost lived day-to-day, poem to poem. He animates Frost's daily struggles with depression, anxiety, self-doubt and confusion. The poet's family life was not happy; he experienced bad luck with his children. Yet, he exhibited tremendous force of will, love for his children and dedication to creating a lasting body of creative work.

Unlike Frost previous biographers, Parini skillfully weaves the details of the poet's life with poetry he created. Frost's desire to "lodge a few poems where they can't be gotten rid of easily" is woven into a picture of an artist attempting to rescue his sanity by creating what he called a "momentary stay against confusion."

For me, reading Frost's poetry is a labor of love; reading Parini's biography is like reliving a best friend's life. This biographical study offers an unusual glimpse into the life, poetry and times of Robert Frost, a man who ranks as one of the world's greatest poets.