THE LETTERS OF ROBERT FROST, VOLUME 3

The latest installment of the poet’s letters, in which he becomes a celebrity.

Meticulously edited by scholars Sheehy, Richardson, Hass, and Atmore, the third of a projected five volumes of letters of Robert Frost (1874-1963) covers the poet’s life from 1929-1936, when his reputation soared. The 602 letters and telegrams, 70% previously uncollected, afford a comprehensive view of Frost’s family, work, and friendships as well as opinions on human nature, academia, and art. A literary star, Frost fulfilled myriad obligations: teaching, lecturing, serving as poet-in-residence, and giving a prodigious number of readings. In 1931, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Collected Poems; many other honors followed. When his friend Louis Untermeyer failed to win a Pulitzer in 1936, Frost commiserated. “I have suffered nervous collapse in my time from the strain of conscious competition and learned from it how to pretend at least that I am below or above it for the rest of my life,” he wrote. “And I’m a good stout pretender when I set out to be.” Along with professional success, though, came personal misfortune. In 1931, his beloved daughter Marjorie and daughter-in-law Lillian were both in sanatoriums for tuberculosis. “We are in many many troubles for the moment,” he confided, “so many that grief loses its dignity and bursts out laughing. I toughen it seems to me.” When Marjorie died of puerperal fever, in 1934, he was disconsolate. Many letters reveal Frost’s prickly opinions on politics and poets. For example, he disparaged Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and scorned “modernismus” in poetry, although he admired Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. “For my part,” he wrote, “I should be as satisfied to play tennis with the net down as to write verse with no verse form set to stay me.” Besides an informative introduction contextualizing the letters and consistently rigorous footnotes, the editors provide a biographical glossary and a narrative chronology.

A richly detailed portrait of Frost in his own words.