The ordeal of Robert Frost: the poet and his poetics

Abstract

Named an Outstanding Academic Book by Choice magazine, The Ordeal of Robert depicts Frost as a thoroughly contemporary poet, dynamically engaged - in his own way - with the developments of literary modernism and American cultural criticism and with the social and political issues of his time. Placing Frost's critical concerns in a broad context of literary theory, Mark Richardson explores the poet's struggles with the vocation of poetry - spiritually, socially, aesthetically, and personally. Through close readings of Frost's poetry and often ignored prose, Richardson argues that Frost's debates with Van Wyck Brooks, Malcolm Cowley, and H. L. Mencken informed his poetics and his poetic style just as much as did his deep identification with earlier writers like Emerson and William James. Richardson also uncovers Frost's neglected similarities with, and important differences from, Pound and Eliot.