Prospects for the Study of Robert Frost

Abstract

Though questions about the place of Robert Frost in the canon of American literature endure, he remains a fascinating poet and public figure whose accessibility and inscrutability will surely engage the next generation of scholars, whether their approach is biographical, cultural, or theoretical. The scattering of archival material related to Frost and the hodgepodge of volumes of varying quality containing his letters, talks, and conversations will remain the chief problem for years even though ongoing efforts to consolidate the prose, the notebooks, the letters, and even his talks will mitigate this difficulty. The publication of Frost's letters over the next five years will certainly inspire a new biography, one less vexed than Lawrence Thompson's still-indispensable account. Inquiring scholars still have much to analyze in Frost's individual poems and volumes, not to mention his politics, his status as celebrity, and his relations to both verbal and visual artists.