Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, California.
In 1894, Frost sold his first poem to The Independent, a weekly magazine published in New York. He published his first poetry collection- A Boy's Will- in 1913. He published his second collection, North of Boston, in 1914.
In 1915, Frost launched a career of teaching, writing, and lecturing- specifically on the myriad sounds and intonations of the spoken English language in writing. He called his colloquial approach to language "the sound of sense."
He won his first of four Pulitzer prizes in 1924 for the book New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes. He would win additional Pulitzers for Collected Poems in 1931, A Further Range in 1937, and A Witness Tree in 1943.
In 1960, Frost was awarded a United States Congressional Gold Medal "In recognition of his poetry, which has enriched the culture of the United States and the philosophy of the world," which was formally bestowed on him by President Kennedy in March 1962.
Frost died in Boston on January 29, 1963, of complications from prostate surgery. He was buried in the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont. His epitaph reads: "I had a lover's quarrel with the world.", which is the last line of his poem "The Lesson for Today," published in 1942.
To learn more about this iconic author, check out the link above or visit his Wikipedia Page.
We are reading from Selected Poems, published by Henry Holt and Company in 1923.
