Books June 1996
The rehabilitation of Robert Frost
A review of Robert Frost: A Biography by Jeffrey Meyers.
I don’t mind being made controversial. No sweeter music can come to my ears than the clash of arms over my dead body when I am down.
—Robert Frost to Lionel Trilling, June 18, 1959
It was Frost’s custom to prefix to successive issues of his collected poems “The Pasture,” an invitation—originally published in North of Boston—into his pastoral world of bucolic delights:
I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.
I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.
This charming and...
A Message from the Editors
Support our crucial work and join us in strengthening the bonds of civilization.
Your donation sustains our efforts to inspire joyous rediscoveries.
