Lawrance Roger Thompson

Thompson emphasizes Frost's competitiveness and cruelty.

My great Amherst College prof, Theodore Baird had Frost to his house many times before he came to his new FL Wright house (built 1940). In a letter, TB quoted some of Thompson, asking, "What does this sentence reflect of Frost, a great maker of sentences?" Frost visited Baird's new house when Theodore's mother was dying in the last room. Frost sat down next to her bed and said, "You say a poem, then I'll say a poem" (back when everybody had memorized lots of verse). Baird cited this to contradict Thompson and show Frost's courtesy.

Read this in three volumes, spending most time on the first, though my first quotation below comes from Vol. II, The Years of Triumph, 1915-38.

Thompson includes much fine writing in absentia, his quotations of the poet. When a Boston Post reporter interviewed RF (Feb, '16), he asked when he writes, and where. In a Morris Chair (we inherited one from a Minnesota great-grandmother) with a writing board. He writes nothing for months, then a blue streak. " I can't do as many writers do, write to keep my hand in...I hear everything I write. All poetry is to me first a matter of sound. I hear my things spoken. I write verse that might be called 'free'--but I believe, after all, that there must be a cadence, a rhythm, to all that is to be poetry at all. I don't mean jingle. I hate jingle. I want drama, too. Some day I may write a play. But I avoid the sublime, the ecstatic, the flights that 300--or is it 3,000?--minor poets of America slop into the magazines month after month. Meaningless twaddle, with a few worn-out tones.
"You know what I mean by tone? I'll explain...Take, for instance, the expression 'oh.' The American poets use it in practically one tone, the grandiose:'Oh Soul! Oh hills!'--Oh Anything! That's the way they go. But think of what 'oh' is really capable: the 'oh' of scorn, the 'oh' of amusement, the 'oh' of surprise, the 'oh' of doubt--and there are many more. But these are disdained by the academic poets. America must get away from the schools"(II.66-68).

Getting away from the schools, he was hired at Amherst College, and years later was tempted back "to be in the councils of the bold"(II. Ch 18). Frost wrote "New Hampshire" and "Stopping by Woods" on the same day.

Frost and his future wife Elinor (White) were co-valedictorians at Lawrence HS, 1892, and his valedictory address followed Elinor's topic, "Conversation as a Force in Life." Going to Dartmouth, though his dad from Harvard, Robert drops out before first semester exams (in Greek, Livy, and algebra) without telling anyone. Taking odd jobs in mills, he publishes "My Butterfly" and quarrels with Elinor, going to Virginia's Dismal Swamp, writes "Reluctance" when back from Virginia, Nov. 1894, age 20:
"Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason...
To bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?"

He marries the schoolkeeper Elinor, and is arrested within the year, fined $10, called "Riffraff" by the Judge for punching his tenant and friend for calling him coward for berating the friend's wife while he wasn't home.
Soon RF enrolls at Harvard (1897), takes Greek with Babbit, a young instructor (rather than Lord at Dartmouth), English with "pansy" Sheffield (tried to get out of it), Mather's Latin comp course, and Parker's readings in Livy, Terence, lyrics, elegiac and iambic poetry. Also, philosophy with Santayana, though RF mocked his religious beliefs, which for the poet were forms of fiction or poetry. Returning the next year, RF was forced to drop out because of another child, and too many cuts, though Babbitt had said, "I don't care how often a man is absent if he does this kind of work."
So RF had an academic education, but fought it in his own verse. How much better educated kids were before TV! When a boy of 14, his mother read to him from Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico," which led to his first published poem, "La Noche Triste" subtitled "Tenochlitan," about the brief period of Aztec triumph before the fall of the empire.

While teaching at Pinkerton Academy, his first year (1906-11) his poem was published in October, "The Trial by Existence." A student wrote "Hen-Man" on the blackboard, an insult. Frost went through the student essays, matched the hand-writing, and kicked the kid (a dentist's son) out of class. Trustees backed him up. When Frost started teaching college, nearby at Plymouth (NH) Normal School, the school head went to Boston, so Frost said "now we can do as we please." He aloudread Twain's Jumping Frog of Calaveras County; another day, finding none had read Connecticut Yankee, he read from that.
He goes to England on his grandfather's bequest annuity of $800 year. Pound accidentally meets RF; they go together for first sight of "A Boy's Will," which P immediately reviews, liking "In Neglect." RF meets Yeats in a candle-lit room talking of psychic research, self-absorbed. Y seems much older than the 9 year difference between him and F (39). In a letter, Elinor says Y had praised A Boy's Will as the best in America for some time, but Y would not say so publicly.
"North of Boston" was also written in England, with all those dialect New England voices. But Frost said when in Michigan being there would probably help his writing of New England, that he wrote better of where he wasn't.… (lisätietoja)

Read this in three volumes, spending most time on the first, though my first quotation below comes from Vol. II, The Years of Triumph, 1915-38.

My great Amherst College prof, Theodore Baird had Frost to his house many times before he came to his new FL Wright house (built 1940). In a letter, TB quoted some of Thompson, asking, "What does this sentence reflect of Frost, a great maker of sentences?" Frost visited Baird's new house when Theodore's mother was dying in the last room. Frost said, "You say a poem, then I'll say a poem" (back when everybody had memorized lots of verse). Baird cited this to contradict Thompson and show Frost's courtesy.

Thompson includes much fine writing in absentia, his quotations of the poet. When a Boston Post reporter interviewed RF (Feb, '16), he asked when he writes, and where. In a Morris Chair (we inherited one from a Minnesota great-grandmother) with a writing board. He writes nothing for months, then a blue streak. " I can't do as many writers do, write to keep my hand in...I hear everything I write. All poetry is to me first a matter of sound. I hear my things spoken. I write verse that might be called 'free'--but I believe, after all, that there must be a cadence, a rhythm, to all that is to be poetry at all. I don't mean jingle. I hate jingle. I want drama, too. Some day I may write a play. But I avoid the sublime, the ecstatic, the flights that 300--or is it 3,000?--minor poets of America slop into the magazines month after month. Meaningless twaddle, with a few worn-out tones.
"You know what I mean by tone? I'll explain...Take, for instance, the expression 'oh.' The American poets use it in practically one tone, the grndiose:'Oh Soul! Oh hills!'--Oh Anything! That's the way they go. But think of what 'oh' is really capable: the 'oh' of scorn, the 'oh' of amusement, the 'oh' of surprise, the 'oh' of doubt--and there are many more. But these are disdained by the academic poets. America must get away from the schools"(II.66-68).

Getting away from the schools, he was hired at Amherst College, and years later was tempted back "to be in the councils of the bold"(II. Ch 18). Frost wrote "New Hampshire" and "Stopping by Woods" on the same day.

Frost and his future wife Elinor (White) were co-valedictorians at Lawrence HS, 1892, and his valedictory address followed Elinor's topic, "Conversation as a Force in Life." Going to Dartmouth, though his dad from Harvard, Robert drops out before first semester exams (in Greek, Livy, and algebra) without telling anyone. Taking odd jobs in mills, he publishes "My Butterfly" and quarrels with Elinor, going to Virginia's Dismal Swamp, writes "Reluctance" when back from Virginia, Nov. 1894, age 20:
"Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason...
To bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?"

He marries the schoolkeeper Elinor, and is arrested within the year, fined $10, called "Riffraff" by the Judge for punching his tenant and friend for calling him coward for berating the friend's wife while he wasn't home.
Soon RF enrolls at Harvard (1897), takes Greek with Babbit, a young instructor (rather than Lord at Dartmouth), English with "pansy" Sheffield (tried to get out of it), Mather's Latin comp course, and Parker's readings in Livy, Terence, lyrics, elegiac and iambic poetry. Also, philosophy with Santayana, though RF mocked his religious beliefs, which for the poet were forms of fiction or poetry. Returning the next year, RF was forced to drop out because of another child, and too many cuts, though Babbitt had said, "I don't care how often a man is absent if he does this kind of work."
So RF had an academic education, but fought it in his own verse. How much better educated kids were before TV! When a boy of 14, his mother read to him from Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico," which led to his first published poem, "La Noche Triste" subtitled "Tenochlitan," about the brief period of Aztec triumph before the fall of the empire.
While teaching at Pinkerton Academy, his first year (1906-11) his poem was published in October, "The Trial by Existence." A student wrote "Hen-Man" on the blackboard, an insult. Frost went through the student essays, matched the hand-writing, and kicked the kid (a dentist's son) out of class. Trustees backed him up. When Frost started teaching college, nearby at Plymouth (NH) Normal School, the school head went to Boston, so Frost said "now we can do as we please." He aloudread Twain's Jumping Frog of Calaveras County; another day, finding none had read Connecticut Yankee, he read from that.
He goes to England on his grandfather's bequest annuity of $800 year. Pound accidentally meets RF; they go together for first sight of "A Boy's Will," which P immediately reviews, liking "In Neglect." RF meets Yeats in a candle-lit room talking of psychic research, self-absorbed. Y seems much older than the 9 year difference between him and F (39). In a letter, Elinor says Y had praised A Boy's Will as the best in America for some time, but Y would not say so publicly.
"North of Boston" was also written in England, with all those dialect New England voices. But Frost said when in Michigan being there would probably help his writing of New England, that he wrote better of where he wasn't. (I.415)… (lisätietoja)