Praise for Robert Frost

“Well-researched and elegantly written. At last the many readers of Robert Frost have a biography so engaging, informed, and sympathetic that they can follow this great American artist’s journey down the road less travelled, the lonely road of genius.”

—Dana Gioia, Book of the Month, BBC Radio 3

“A fine new biography. Parini has made a valuable addition to our understanding of this great and very complicated poet.”

—The National Review

“Rarely has Frost’s story been told this dexterously, or with a better understanding of the relation of Frost’s personality crises to his accomplishment as a poet.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A sensitive life of Frost that highlights the poet’s struggle to find light and stability in an existence filled with darkness and chaos. Parini’s life magnificently details how Frost, through fortitude and lifelong dedication to craft, sought to heed his own advice to be whole again beyond confusion.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Parini gracefully intermingles superb close readings with sensitive accounts of Frost’s many personal losses and artistic accomplishments.”

—Booklist

“Parini’s book is the best record we have of this man, possibly America’s most enduring poet, and it will make you want to read Frost himself—the real job of literary biography.”

—Men’s Journal

“Parini expertly guides the reader through Frost’s life and explains his poetry in a way that is understandable to all, not just literary scholars. Those interested in the life of a great American literary figure, as well as his body of work, will find this very readable biography enormously satisfying.”

—New York Post

“A rich and balanced biography. At last Frost has found in Jay Parini a biographer prepared to read the poems and the life with care and wisdom. He gives us Robert Frost, the poet, in all his rich contradictions.”

—Sydney Morning Herald

“Parini serves Frost well as a comrade-in-arms: He, too, is a distinguished poet. Metaphor by metaphor, he tracks his subject into the snowy woods of Frost’s imagination, and the visions there are lovely, dark and deep.”

—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“What sets Parini off from other Frost biographers is his fine critical judgment of Frost’s poetry. His crowning accomplishment is bringing home to us the true glory of Frost. A biographer can do no more.”

—Newark Star-Ledger

“Parini has his Frost to give us, his narrative to shape, and in broad outline the shape is convincing, even satisfying. Parini is also an accomplished and insightful reader, and many of his treatments of individual poems are cogent and revealing.”

—The Boston Globe

“A narrative that gracefully and clearly takes the reader through Frost’s private and public career, while offering insights into the poetry and its making that are both tactful and persuasive.”

—John Boland, Irish Times