How Does Robert Frost's Life Affected American Poetry?

Robert Frost is known as one of the most famous poets of the early 20th century for many different reasons all the way from his unique writing style and also how he rose to fame and out of poverty in such a little amount of time. He’s risen to such fame that a lot of times his poems are read to and studied by children and young adults all around the world. Some of his unique writing styles involve his detailed poems of nature such as “The Road Not Taken,” “Fire and Ice,” “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” and many others. Frost was able to rise to fame in a very short amount of time, although there were still some critics who thought that his works were that of something a normal person could write. Robert Frost through his complicated yet simple style of writing poetry has affected American literature in such a way that many people recognize him, alongside others, as one of the greatest American poets of his time due to his description of nature and modern events in
his time. Surprisingly, there’s still a lot of people who don’t know who Robert Frost is, but that’s understandable in a way. Robert Lee Frost was born March 26, 1874 and died January 29, 1963. After his father died of tuberculosis in 1885, Frost and his family moved to Lawrence Massachusetts where he spent the rest of his childhood. In his graduation ceremony he shared valedictorian honors with Elinor White whom he eventually fell in love with and married in 1895. A while before marrying Elinor, he attended Dartmouth college but quit early on unable to adjust to the academic routine. Still newly wedded, Frost started teaching and farming to help support the family he was trying to raise. Frost and Elinor had six children but two died early on. In 1897 Frost attended harvard university but still not having the perseverance to complete college he left after two years of study. From there Frost and his family raised Poultry for nine years in Derry, New Hampshire. After lots of discouragement in pursuing his poetic career, he finally got the money to move to London in 1911 and made his big start there. “Apparently publishers were very open to new talent so he published a few books of poetry there in London.” (Gerber) When Frost decided to move back to the states, publishers swarmed him because they had already heard so much about his unique poems and his grasp of nature. Later on still unable to support his family through poetry, he taught part time at Amherst College and the University of Michigan 1916 to 1938. He then went on to win many prizes including the pulitzer prize for the collection New Hampshire. After his first few books, all of which impacted American literature in multiple ways, he wrote many more and eventually had the honor of reciting a poem of John F. Kennedy’s inauguration ceremony. You know those countless nature poems that you read in elementary school on into high school? Chances are they were written by Robert Frost, you just didn’t know it or perhaps even forgot about it. His works have received many awards and they are often times recognized throughout schools or recited just as equally. One of the many reasons his poems are taught in the schools is because of how well they grasp the outside world and his views at the times of war. The poems he’s written have impacted literature in ways that provided America a new and unique generation of poetry to study and reflect back on. By the time Frost had died, he’d already influenced many people with his prevailing poems on the wonders and beauty of nature all around. One of Frost’s most prevailing themes that appears throughout his works is his description of nature. As I’ve mentioned in the paper before some of his more popular works involving nature are “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” “Fire and Ice,” and “Stopping by Woods on A Snowy Evening.” He stormed up the ideas for many of these poems while he lived on a farm raising poultry. While at first his brilliant description of nature and the world around didn't do so well, he finally got recognized for clever stanzas like “Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower;” (Odell, 721) and managed to score a signing with multiple publishers who wanted him at the time. Over the years he continued to use recurring rhyme scheme in his poems but got more into detail with poems as the years went on. Today there are many critics who praise the things that Frost wrote about and uplist any of his poems, although some don’t like his writing style involving nature at all. Frost has received a wide range of criticism over the years as an author.
Not only has he been praised for a lot of what he’s written but some people don’t think his works are all that great or think they are too simple as good of a writer as he is. On his poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” George Montiero connects this poem to one of Frost’s in his later years that has a darker meaning. He says that, “the loss of a man's horse may be as great a loss as that of one's life” (Montiero, 5) referring to the death of the horse in the poem “The Draft Horse.” He praises how Frost seemed to continue a poem almost forty years later, and many other authors praise how Frost would make small references like “my little horse” and “too heavy a horse now” connecting two different poems from completely different times. Things like this won Frost a lot of recognition much later after his death. There are hundreds of reviews now that point out his references nowadays and what makes him such a great american
author. To sum it all up, Robert Frost had it rough the first few decades of his life but once he got some of his collections published in the states he was able to stick his foot in the door and make something of himself. His works impacted american literature in such a way that now he is recognized easily as one of the most famous poets of his time and his poems are taught or studied practically everywhere. The recurring themes that show up throughout his poems is that of the beauty in nature around him. He also makes connections with the world and what’s going on around him. Some of these works gained a lot of praise and critique in ways that was out of the norm or made connections that no one else had seen before. Robert Frost through his unique writing style has affected American literature in such a way that many people recognize him, alongside others, as one of the greatest American poets of his time due to his description of nature. All in all, he was a great american author and will continue to affect many students in the future.