Despite his tragic story that can make one think of poems marked by the evil of living, as in the case of Eugenio Montale, Robert Frost chooses a different approach. His poetry is in fact characterized by sweetness and tranquility with the desire to give hope to the reader.
Who was Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost (San Francisco, March 26, 1874 – Boston, January 29, 1963) was an American poet. He was born in the well-known city of the west coast with his sister, mother Isabelle, of Scottish descent, and his father William. moving to Los Angeles where he lives until his eleven years.
The tragic death of his father leads the young man and the women of the house to move to their paternal grandparents in Massachusetts and here begins his academic career which ended withHarvard enrollment. He never completes his studies at the university as he devotes his time to looking for a job, passing from teaching to working as a shoemaker up to entering the publishing world.
The beginning of his career as a poet
In the meantime he discovers the passion for poetry publishing his first production entitled “My Butterfly” in 1894 in the newspaper “The Independent”. The following year he met e marry the love of his life Elinor Miriam White who becomes his muse in poetic production.
The two moved to the UK and was influenced there by numerous contemporary colleagues including Ezra Pound. With this he forms a strong relationship of friendship which also helps him to grow professionally. In 1915 he returned to the United States boasting the publication of two successful collections called “A Boy’s Will” and “North of Boston”. In these years he achieved great success becoming one of the most famous poets of the time also winning 4 Pulitzer Prizes.
Life marked by tragic events
The life of the poet, however, is often interrupted by tragic events. The aforementioned death of his father from tuberculosis is certainly the first of these. At the age of twenty-six he then lost his mother to a terrible cancer and in 1920 he was forced to have his sister followed in a psychiatric hospital.
He later discovers that a depression of his sister, from whom his mother also suffered, is common to the great evil he feels and to which he cannot give a name. Her daughter Irma also inherits this disease and is locked up in a psychiatric hospital where she dies several years later. Of his six daughters only Lesley and Irma remain alive but life marks him again with the death of his wife from cardiac arrest.