At a glance
- Age
- 88
- Born
- March 26, 1874
- From
- San Francisco
- Lives in
- New Hampshire
- Nationality
- United States
Biography
The lines that circulate most — the fork in the road, the woods on a snowy evening — come from a poet who spent his working life describing rural New England in the early twentieth century. Robert Frost wrote about farms, fields and country roads, and readers have been pulling instruction out of those settings ever since.
He was born in San Francisco in March 1874, though the landscape most associated with his work lies on the other side of the country. What set his poems apart was the way he handled American speech: plain, spoken, colloquial, the rhythm of ordinary conversation rather than literary diction. He was known for realistic depictions of rural life, not idealised ones.
The rural scenes were rarely just scenery. Frost used them to work through complex social and philosophical questions, which is why so much of the writing survives being quoted out of context — the surface is simple enough to remember, and there is something underneath it worth arguing about. He died in January 1963.
He was born in San Francisco in March 1874, though the landscape most associated with his work lies on the other side of the country. What set his poems apart was the way he handled American speech: plain, spoken, colloquial, the rhythm of ordinary conversation rather than literary diction. He was known for realistic depictions of rural life, not idealised ones.
The rural scenes were rarely just scenery. Frost used them to work through complex social and philosophical questions, which is why so much of the writing survives being quoted out of context — the surface is simple enough to remember, and there is something underneath it worth arguing about. He died in January 1963.
