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I recently attended a “live literature” performance. A wonderful actor named J.T. Turner brought Robert B. Frost and his poetry to life. Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874, but his mother moved the family back East after Frost’s father died. He graduated from Lawrence High School (about 30 minutes from here) and spent most of his life in New England. He died in 1963 at age 88 in Boston.
Of course, I was familiar with many of Frost’s poems. They are especially well known here in New England. However, I was unaware of the many tragic events in Frost’s life. While achieving great success in his lifetime, including an unprecedented four Pulitzer Prizes, Robert Frost suffered unfathomable losses and a strong family history of mental illness.
After losing his father from tuberculosis at age 11 and moving to Massachusetts, his mother died of cancer. In 1920, he had to commit his younger sister Jeanie to a mental hospital, where she died nine years later. Both he and his mother suffered from depression, and his daughter Irma was committed to a mental hospital in 1947. Frost’s wife, Elinor, also experienced bouts of depression.
Elinor and Robert Frost had six children: son Elliott (1896–1900, died of cholera); daughter Lesley Frost Ballantine (1899–1983); son Carol (1902–1940); daughter Irma (1903–1967); daughter Marjorie (1905–1934, died as a result of puerperal fever after childbirth); and daughter Elinor Bettina (died just one day after her birth in 1907). Only Lesley and Irma outlived their father. Frost’s wife, who had heart problems throughout her life, developed breast cancer in 1937 and died of heart failure in 1938.*
During the performance, I learned that the cause of death of Frost’s beloved son Carol was suicide. He was 38 and a poet, like his father. The actor portraying Frost said that Carol had chosen the woods. Lovely, dark and deep.
I’ll never hear that poem in quite the same way again.
Frost believed, as many do, that poetry is meant to be read aloud and I agree. Here is a recording of Robert Frost reading his poem “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening.”
*source: Wikipedia
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