Frost Land

On the small balcony with purple morning glories and magenta zinnias in pots, I see two eagles flowing west to east, lower to higher, doing whatever they do at a time like this, but definitely showing themselves off in a faded blue flannel sky with a muted sun on a day with rain due. Layered into the distance are the various greens of woods and forest, barely Maine past rolling New Hampshire just off the coast, the greens softened by a damp atmosphere which also tamps down the sound of an occasional truck and the housing construction below on a main road.

With one eye on the eagles, I’m reading a 1946 compilation, 1965 21st printing, of the poems of Robert Frost introduced casually for the average reader by community organizer Louis Untermeyer, the tireless anthologizer of the 20th century, his Bob Frost coming to us in a brisk profile, highlights of the path to Famous Frost, like Famous Seamus of Ireland later:

born in San Francisco; rebel father’s early death there; mother-led return to New England roots territory, mill city Lawrence on the Merrimack River (echoes of cultural cousins Anne Bradstreet, J. G. Whittier, and H. D. Thoreau); in and out of college; part-time jobs teaching, doing factory shifts, and news writing; then a farm in Derry N.H. thanks to a grandparent; ten years of crops and poultry (with poetry on the side); ten years in the dirt before earning his way out of agriculture; selling the land to finance a last-ditch attempt to get noticed as an author by sailing to England with wife Elinor and four kids; walking into a London book publisher’s office and getting a deal to launch his first collection of poems, then another one, the second being “North of Boston,” which lifts him into literary orbit in his late 30s; followed by return to America and the late start of a career. World War I has begun. He steps off the ship and is the talk of the book world in New York City.

On his way forward he collects four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, teaches on numerous campuses, endures brutal family tragedies, makes a friend of a young President from New England, and achieves a commemorative U.S. postage stamp after passing in 1963.

Frost is still the codeword for “poet” in most of today’s America, more than Whitman or even Dickinson for mainstream recognition. “The Road Not Taken,” “Stopping By Woods…” “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” All this in the 75 cents paperback bought in a shop with “used books,” from a time when a regular person could get 200 pages of Frost’s poems for less than a dollar. Almost free. And still in circulation. In his own way he is all around us.

Paul Marion (c) 2026