Robert Frost

Some poets embellish the glamor and bustle of cities, the intersections of the many lives being lived in busy streets. Poet Robert Frost (1874-1963) took the opposite tack, staying simple and close to home: His poems are recognized for their sparse, straightforward tone and their depiction of everyday life against the backdrop of his beloved home in rural New England. Frost was born in California but spent the majority of his life in New England, and the Massachusetts and New Hampshire landscapes had a deep influence on his writing. One of his most widely quoted poems is “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” which depicts a solitary winter evening in the forest: "The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep." Frost also worked as a teacher and a farmer to make ends meet, and this familiarity with the realities of country life often seeped into his poetry. As a writer, Frost is remembered as somewhat of a maverick, in more ways than one. He shunned the popular Romantic writing style of the time, breaking away from its strict conventions and benevolent view of nature for a more honest and stark depiction of landscape he knew. He also reached success later in life than many of his contemporaries: Though he began writing in high school, his first book wasn’t published until he was nearly 40. It was 10 years after that, as Frost was entering his fifties, that his collection “New Hampshire” received the Pulitzer Prize. He went on to become the only poet to win four Pulitzers, as well as several other national honors. Frost’s work is now a staple of the American poetic tradition, valued for its down-to-earth renderings of everyday life and honest emotions. Here are 17 quotes from the poems, public interviews, and letters of America’s “rural sage,” on everything from persistence and nature to creativity and love.