Robert Frost, Great American Poet

Robert Frost:

Great American

Poet

by Jordan MacWilliams

1496184012

English 12

Module 2

December 15th 2004

Robert Frost:

The Great American Poet

Robert Frost was one of America's greatest poets who wrote of the ordinary; life, death and all that is between. Robert Frost was born Robert Lee Frost in 1874 to a Southern American man and his wife, of Scottish descent. Although Frost is primarily associated with New England through the poems that he wrote he was in fact born in San Francisco. It was here that he spent his childhood until the age of eleven. It was at this time, in 1885, that tragedy stuck the Frost family with the death of Robert Frost's father. After the death of his father Robert moved with his mother and sister to eastern Massachusetts near his paternal grandparents. After the move to Massachusetts, Robert Frost went to Lawrence High School where he wrote his first poems. It was from Lawrence High School that he graduated as co-valedictorian with the woman he was to later marry: Elinor Miriam White. In 1892 Robert Frost attended Dartmouth College but ended up staying for less than a term. He returned home to teach school and worked at various jobs. In 1894 he was unable to persuade Elinor to marry him as she wanted to complete college first. He decide to head south on a journey into Virginia's Dismal Swamp. After he managed to emerge relatively unscathed he came home to Lawrence where he and Elinor were finally married in December 1895. Elinor and Robert taught school for a time. In 1897 Frost entered Harvard College as a special student but remained there just short of two years because of uncertain health. He left Harvard and rejoined his wife in Lawrence, where she was about to bear a second child. In October of 1900 he moved his family on a farm in New Hampshire that was purchased for him by his grandfather. It was there that he wrote many of the poems that would go into his first published volumes, a nine year endeavor. Robert Frost tried but his attempt at poultry farming was not successful. In 1906, for income he was teaching English at Pinkerton Academy, a secondary school in New Hampshire. In 1912 after teaching at the State Normal School in Plymouth, New Hampshire, he sold his farm and sailed with his family