Robert Frost: A Life

" Robert Frost is a pleasure to read, combining . . .penetrating commentary on the poetry and good illustrative anecdotes. . . . Mr. Parini has brought Frost more sharply into focus."―Christopher Lehman-Haupt, The New York Times

This fascinating reassessment of America's most popular and famous poet reveals a more complex and enigmatic man than many readers might expect. Jay Parini spent over twenty years interviewing friends of Robert Frost and working in the poet's archives at Dartmouth, Amherst, and elsewhere to produce this definitive and insightful biography of both the public and private man. While he depicts the various stages of Frost's colorful life, Parini also sensitively explores the poet's psyche, showing how he dealt with adversity, family tragedy, and depression. By taking the reader into the poetry itself, which he reads closely and brilliantly, Parini offers an insightful road map to Frost's remarkable world.

"Inspired and always humanizing, Parini sympathetically illuminates the stunning contradictions embedded in Frost's personality, work, and life." —Susan Miron, The Miami Herald

"Rarely has Frost's story been told this dexterously, or with a better understanding of the relation of Frost's personality crises to his accomplishment as a poet." — Publishers Weekly