“The Gift Outright”

By |2021-11-16T08:04:03-06:00March 25th, 2017|Categories: Poetry, Robert Frost|

The land was ours before we were the land’s. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia, But we were England’s, still colonials, Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed. […]

“Out, Out —”

By |2021-11-03T20:07:45-05:00January 29th, 2017|Categories: Poetry, Robert Frost|

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and [...]

The Classicism of Robert Frost

By |2019-10-23T12:45:22-05:00January 28th, 2017|Categories: Robert Frost|

Not many writers, especially not many poets, surpass after the age of fifty-six the achievements of their middle life—but Robert Frost did… One night in the fall of 1926 I found a note in my mailbox that gave me a jump of excitement. I saved that note for many years but cannot reproduce it now, [...]

“The Star-Splitter”

By |2021-11-06T12:39:28-05:00July 31st, 2016|Categories: Poetry, Robert Frost|

“You know Orion always comes up sideways. Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains, And rising on his hands, he looks in on me Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something I should have done by daylight, and indeed, After the ground is frozen, I should have done Before it froze, and a gust [...]

“Mending Wall”

By |2022-09-13T09:41:44-05:00February 28th, 2016|Categories: Poetry, Robert Frost|

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, [...]

East of Early Winters: The Poetic Craft

By |2019-09-12T12:05:31-05:00February 19th, 2016|Categories: Poetry, Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot|

East of Early Winters, by Richard Wakefield (The University of Evansville Press, 2006) No period in the history of the arts more doggedly insisted on its concern with craft—its identification of artist with artisan—than did the Modernist period at the beginning of the twentieth century. And yet, at no time were the familiar features of [...]

“In Equal Sacrifice”

By |2021-11-17T08:16:09-06:00January 31st, 2016|Categories: Poetry, Robert Frost|

Thus of old the Douglas did: He left his land as he was bid With the royal heart of Robert the Bruce In a golden case with a golden lid, To carry the same to the Holy Land; By which we see and understand That that was the place to carry a heart At loyalty [...]

“Love and a Question”

By |2021-11-20T16:02:55-06:00November 8th, 2015|Categories: Love, Poetry, Robert Frost|

A stranger came to the door at eve, And he spoke the bridegroom fair. He bore a green-white stick in his hand, And, for all burden, care. He asked with the eyes more than the lips For a shelter for the night, And he turned and looked at the road afar Without a window light. [...]

“Reluctance”

By |2021-11-20T08:39:29-06:00September 27th, 2015|Categories: Poetry, Robert Frost|

Out through the fields and the woods And over the walls I have wended; I have climbed the hills of view And looked at the world, and descended; I have come by the highway home, And lo, it is ended. The leaves are all dead on the ground, Save those that the oak is keeping [...]

“A Prayer in Spring”

By |2023-03-19T19:47:16-05:00March 22nd, 2015|Categories: Poetry, Robert Frost|Tags: |

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today; And give us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here All simply in the springing of the year. Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night; And make us happy in the [...]

On Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay”

By |2018-11-12T21:12:04-06:00April 27th, 2014|Categories: Robert Frost|

As the last of the snow melts in my backyard—once again—I am amazed that we were able to bury so many effigies of Punxsutawney Phil during the extra month that his shadow added to an already relentless winter. Although though it is well past March 20, the official first day of the season, and even [...]

“Education by Poetry”

By |2021-11-10T08:18:48-06:00May 6th, 2013|Categories: Education, Featured, Liberal Learning, Poetry, Robert Frost|Tags: |

Education by poetry is education by metaphor. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. “Education by Poetry” was a talk delivered at Amherst College and subsequently revised for publication in the Amherst Graduates’ Quarterly of February 1931. [...]

Robert Frost: The Poet as Philosopher

By |2014-01-18T16:04:35-06:00January 31st, 2013|Categories: Books, Peter Stanlis, Philosophy, Poetry, Robert Frost|Tags: |

Robert Frost: The Poet as Philosopher, by Peter J. Stanlis. Probably no other American poet has suffered more misunderstanding at the hands of his readers, admirers and detractors alike, than Robert Frost. The range and variety of misreadings of both the man and his poetry are legion: he was simply a nature poet, child of [...]

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