Vermont Reads 2008

“Sharing Our Past — Shaping Our Future” Since 1974

Further Reading and Web Resources

 

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Further Reading

 

Not surprisingly, there are innumerable books and sites devoted to Robert Frost’s life and work. Amazon.com lists more than 13,000 titles related to the poet and a Google search for “Robert Frost” brings up more than 2,700,000 links! The list below provides a (very) short list of some of the best books, and the more high-quality, relevant, must-see sites to help you with your Vermont Reads projects.

Books of Poetry by Robert Frost (* won Pulitzer Prize) – by date of publication

 

The Poetry of Robert Frost, Edward Connery Lathem, ed., (Holt, 1969).  The volume includes      

       A Boy’s Will (1913, 1915)

       North of Boston (1914)

       Mountain Interval (1916)

       New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes (1923)*

       West-Running Brook (1929)

       A Further Range (1936)*

       A Witness Tree (1942)*

       Steeple Bush (1947)

       In the Clearing (1962)

       A Masque of Reason (1945)

       A Masque of Mercy (1947)

Prose by Robert Frost – in alphabetical order

 

Family Letters of Robert and Elinor Frost, Arnold E. Grade, ed. (State University of New York Press, 1972)

Interviews with Robert Frost, Edward Connery Lathem, ed. (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966; Cape, 1967)

The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer, Louis Untermeyer, ed. (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963; Cape, 1964)

Robert Frost and John Bartlett: The Record of a Friendship, by Margaret Bartlett Anderson (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963)

Robert Frost and Sidney Cox: Forty Years of Friendship, William R. Evans, ed. (University Press of New England, 1981)

Selected Letters of Robert Frost, Lawrance Thompson, ed. (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964)

The Notebooks of Robert Frost. Robert Faggen, ed. (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007) See annotation below in “Books about Frost.”

Poetry and Prose

 

Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays, Richard Poirier and Mark Richardson, eds.  New York: Library of America, 1995

The Robert Frost Reader: Poetry and Prose, Edward Connery Lathem and Lawrence Thompson, eds. (Most recent edition: Owl Books, 2002). Three volumes-in-one of much of Frost’s poetry and prose, including a variety of essays.

And an essay of special note: “‘A Perfect Day—a Day of Prowess’” in Baseball: Four Decades of Sports Illustrated’s Finest Writing on America’s Favorite Pastime. Mark Mulvoy, managing ed. Birmingham: Oxmoor House, 1993 (p. 258-262). Also in Baseball: A Literary Anthology (listed as “Perfect Day—A Day of Prowess”). Nicholas Dawidoff, ed. New York: Library of America, 2002 (p. 260-263).

 

Books about Frost

 

The Cambridge Companion to Robert Frost, Robert Faggen, ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2001). Collection of specially commissioned essays by Frost experts covering the poet’s biography, art, and thought.

The Frost Family’s Adventure in Poetry: Sheer Morning Gladness at the Brim, by Lesley Lee Francis. (University of MO Press, 1994). About Frost family’s early years written by a granddaughter (daughter of Lesley).

Going by Contraries: Robert Frost’s Conflict with Science. Hass, Robert Bernard. Charlottesville: University of VA Press, 2002. Explores Frost’s philosophical and scientific beliefs and how they impacted his poetry.

Homage to Robert Frost, by Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott. (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997). Essays on the poet by three Nobel laureates that seek to move beyond the caricatures of Frost and help readers understand the man and his poetry more deeply.

Into My Own: The English Years of Robert Frost 1912-1915, by John Evangelist Walsh. (Grove Press, 1988). A “gracefully written study” of Frost’s prolific and transformative years in England.

New Hampshire’s Child: The Derry Journals of Lesley Frost, by Lesley Frost. (State University of New York Press, 1969). Notes and index by Lawrance Thompson and Arnold Grade. Journals of Frost’s daughter from age 6. Reproduced in facsimile (original notebook pages).

The Notebooks of Robert Frost by Robert Frost; Robert Faggen, ed. (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). Previously unpublished notebooks of Frost offer a fascinating glimpse into the workings of the poet’s mind. Extremely well-annotated by eminent Frost scholar Faggen. Heralded as one of the literary publications of 2007.

Robert Frost: The Early Years 1874-1915 and Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph 1915-1938, by Lawrance Thompson. (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1966 and 1970, respectively).

Robert Frost: The Later Years 1938-1963, by Lawrance Thompson and R. H. Winnick. (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1977).

Robert Frost: A Biography, by Thompson and Winnick (Condensed, one-volume edition; Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1981). The seminal, but controversial, biography(ies) of the poet. Volume Two won the Pulitzer Prize despite some concern over Thompson’s less-than-sympathetic portrait.

Robert Frost: A Life, by Jay Parini. (Henry Holt, 1999). Middlebury College’s Parini rescues Frost from the stereotype of a cold, curmudgeonly man. Publisher’s Weekly said, “Rarely has Frost’s story been told this dexterously, or with a better understanding of the relation of Frost’s personal crises to his accomplishment as a poet.”

Robert Frost and John Bartlett: The Record of a Friendship, by Margaret Bartlett Anderson (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963). Primarily a series of letters between the two men but heavily augmented by the author’s reflections. (Also appears above in “Prose by Robert Frost.”)

Robert Frost’s New England, by Betsy and Tom Melvin, with a foreword by Jay Parini. (University Press of New England, 2000). A coffee table book matching the authors’ photographs of the New England landscape with Frost poems.

Robert Frost: The Poet as Philosopher, by Peter J. Stanlis. (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2007). This examination of the philosophical underpinnings of Frost’s poetry considers the poet’s dualism – his nuanced, balanced understanding of individual and community, science and faith, matter and mind or spirit.

Robert Frost: The People, Places and Stories Behind His New England Poetry, by Lea Newman (New England Press, 2000).  A selection of 36 Frost poems with a background essay to accompany each poem.

The Road Not Taken: A Selection of Robert Frost’s Poems, by Robert Frost, with comments by Louis Untermeyer. (Owl Books, 2002). Untermeyer’s commentary alongside the poems.

For more literary criticism, see this web site for a selected list: http://www.literaryhistory.com/20thC/Frost

Children’s Editions of Frost’s Works

 

Birches, Ed Young, illus. (Owlet, 1988 and 2002)

Christmas Trees, Ted Rand, illus. (Henry Holt, 1990; Owlet, 2001)

Poetry for Young People: Robert Frost, Gary D. Schmidt, ed.; Henri Sorensen, illus. (Sterling, 1994).

The Runaway, Glenna Lang, illus. (David R. Godine, 2003)

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, Susan Jeffers, illus. (Dutton Juvenile, 1978 and 2001)

Swinger of Birches: Poems of Robert Frost for Young People, Barbara Hocklridge, ed. (Stemmer House Publishers, 1982)

You Come Too: Favorite Poems for Readers of All Ages, with Foreword by Noel Perrin, 1959, 2002.  Formerly entitled, You Come Too: Favorite Poems for Young Readers, Foreword by Hyde Cox (1959)

Other Books by Natalie Bober, author of A Restless Spirit

 

Abigail Adams: Witness To A Revolution (Atheneum, 1995; Aladdin, 1995)

Breaking Tradition: The Story of Louise Nevelson (Atheneum, 1984)

Countdown to Independence: A Revolution of Ideas in England and Her American Colonies: 1760-1776 (Atheneum, 2001)

Let’s Pretend: Poems of Flight and Fancy (Viking, 1986; Viking-Penguin, 1990)

Marc Chagall: Painter of Dreams (Jewish Publication Society, 1991)

Thomas Jefferson: Draftsman of a Nation (University of Virginia Press, April 2007)

Thomas Jefferson: Man on a Mountain (Atheneum, 1988; Collier, 1993; Aladdin, 1997)

William Wordsworth: The Wandering Poet (Thomas Nelson, 1975)

 

 

Web Resources

 

Web Sites

http://www.nataliebober.com/ — The official web site of the author of A Restless Spirit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost — The Wikipedia entry for Frost.

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/192 — The Poets.org entry for Frost.

http://www.frostfriends.org/ — The Friends of Robert Frost’s site and online home of the Robert Frost Stone House Museum in South Shaftsbury, Vermont. Contains substantial information about Frost’s life in Bennington County, and at other locations in Vermont and elsewhere.

http://www.robertfrostfarm.org/ — Robert Frost Farm in Derry, New Hampshire; tours, trails, displays, and poetry readings are all available at the farm.

http://www.frostplace.org/ — The Frost homestead in Franconia, New Hampshire; a museum and poetry center including conferences and seminars for young and adult poets and educators.

http://www.findagrave.com/php/famous.php?page=cem&FScemeteryid=641555 — A listing of the famous internments in the Old Bennington Cemetery, where Frost is buried. Click on his entry to view photos of the gravesite (grave photos also available from the frostfriends.org site listed above).

http://www.learner.org/catalog/extras/vvspot/video/frost.html — Video of Frost reading “Apple-Picking.” Priceless!

http://midddigital.middlebury.edu/local_files/robert_frost/index.html — Exceptional online exhibit presented by Special Collections at Middlebury College. Lectures/readings; photographs; letters/manuscripts; selected bibliography; detailed journal entries/notes of meetings between Reginald Cook, longtime director of the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College, and Robert Frost; and more. A must-see!

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~speccoll/Collections/Manuscripts/RobertFrostGuide.shtml — A description of the Robert Frost collection at Dartmouth College.

Indexes

These sites provide a list of links to a variety of Frost information on the web.

http://www.literaryhistory.com/20thC/Frost.htm — Links to selected literary criticism, biographical information, etc.

http://www.astro.umass.edu/local/amherst/walking_tour/frost.html — Amherst, Massachusetts Robert Frost links.

Lesson Plan Sites

http://www.webenglishteacher.com/frost.html — Lessons plans and teaching ideas about Frost poems.

http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?ID=345 — National Endowment for the Humanities site; plans for “narrative” Frost poems (those that tell a story).

http://www.myetv.org/education/ntti/lessons/2002_lessons/frost.cfm — Grade 10 plans.

http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=859 — Grades 6-8 plans.

http://www.teachervision.fen.com/poetry/lesson-plan/4414.html — Grade 5-8; focused on poetry read at inaugurations.

http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/01-1/lp2296.shtml — Lessons designed to compare Frost to other poets.

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