Biography
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As a four-time Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry, Robert Frost enhanced human comprehension of life in many ways. His personal life and poems melded into a climax, like all great stories, when he presented his poem "The Gift Outright" at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. His personal life, however, began on March 26th, 1874 in San Francisco. One year later, after the passing of his father, his family moved back to its roots in New England. Once grown, Frost attended Dartmouth and Harvard, but left without a degree. Without his degree, he worked as a farmer until he later in life moved to England and gained jobs both as an editor and a teacher. With a brain like a sponge, Frost absorbed all of the knowledge he learned from these jobs and squeezed it into the themes and ideas of many of his most famous poems. These poems related mostly to New England, especially Vermont and New Hampshire, and were built upon the landscapes, folkways, colloquialisms, and mannerisms found in the area. Although his poems tended to be compiled of plain language and conventional poetic forms, they maintained a graceful style. This graceful style did not come without inspiration, though. It was inspired by the classical Greek Horace and many other or his classical contemporaries. This style, however, was well modified. For complex subjects, Frost wrote in a complex style. He adjusted his complexity dependently. This complexity stemmed from his range of moods and emotions in his rich works. He addressed all topics ranging from the "terror and tragedy of life" in "Design" to loneliness in "The Hill Wife" (The World Book).Frost, however, early in life, had his dreams fulfilled through his marriage to Elinor Miriam White, his co-valedictorian and old school sweetheart. While he had chosen to leave college, she chose to remain and finish her education before getting married. Together, they had six children. Two suffered from illness, and eventually it became time for a change as Frost, his wife, and four children set out to England. Frost was a popular speaker, and Elinor served as his secretary and travel companion. Sadly, though, in 1938, Elinor died of a heart attack. Frost soon returned to Massachusetts and died on January 29, 1963. His tombstone befittingly read “I Had a Lover’s Quarrel with the World” (Merriman). Nine months after his death, his importance was magnified and his name glorified when Kennedy gave a speech praising him and exalting the importance of the arts in America.