Life of Robert Frost

HENRY HART is currently the Mildred and J. B. Hickman Professor of Humanities at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. He has published several books of literary criticism about modern poets, including The Poetry of Geoffrey Hill (1986), Seamus Heaney: Poet of Contrary Progressions (1991), Robert Lowell and the Sublime (1995), and The James Dickey Reader (1999). From 1984 to 2004, he was an editor of Verse, an international journal of contemporary poetry.

• Acknowledgments ixList of Abbreviations and Author’s Note xi1. The New England Frosts 12. Rebel Sons and Punitive Fathers 83. Strong Man’s Food and Swedenborgian Mysticism 184. “A Boy’s Will Is the Wind’s Will” 265. Reluctant Yankees 396. Monuments to After‐thought 557. “Precipitate in Love” 648. Adventures in the Great Dismal Swamp 809. From Riffraff to Harvard 9310. Deaths of a Son and a Hired Man 10411. Indoor and Outdoor Schooling 12112. Hen Man in the Academy 13413. To the Land of The Golden Treasury 14814. The Lively Gallows 16715. Victory at Home 18016. Amherst Interval 20217. Sense and Sensibility 21718. A Home that Never Was on Land or Sea 23019. Something beyond Conflict 24020. Delivering Battle 25121. Weddings, Divorces, and Funerals 26122. A Survivalist’s Further Range 27823. Elinor’s Final Ordeal 29424. Inferno to Vita Nuova 30225. A Biblical Job by a Witness Tree 32026. Mercy for the Damned 33227. Mr Frost Goes to Washington 34428. A Brief Shining Moment with the Kennedys 36129. Last Act on the Global Stage 376Notes 390Bibliography 415Index 423

"Hart did a great job of dramatizing the precariousness of Frost's life. The letters Hart found in various... new sources, combined with a close reading of many of Frost's poems, enable Hart to reveal Frost as a much more complicated person and poet than some critics and biographers believed."—Frank Schatz, The Virginia Gazette, May 3 2017