Poetry
North of Boston
Robert Frost · 1914
Synopsis
Sixteen poems after a short prologue, set for the most part on New England farms, many of them dialogue scenes. Two neighbours rebuild in spring the stone wall that separates their land: one wonders what it is for, the other repeats his father's saying. A farmer and his wife wonder whether they should take back an old hired hand who has returned to them, exhausted. A couple tears itself apart on the staircase, over the little grave the husband dug himself. A farm woman tells campers about the mad uncle who was kept in a cage and about her own stay in the asylum.
Context
The volume appears in London in May 1914 with David Nutt, who had published its author's first book the previous year; it is twice as long and contains about half as many poems. The dedication to his wife announces it as a book of people. Lascelles Abercrombie reviews it in The Nation in June, and extracts are reprinted in July by the Boston Evening Transcript; Ezra Pound in turn praises, in Poetry, thoroughly real characters and writing without artifice. Henry Holt's American edition appears in February 1915, a few days before the author's return, who comes home as an established writer.
Who it is for
Long dialogue narratives, to be read slowly. The metre is regular but the spoken sentence constantly cuts across it.
Prizes and reception
The book that made its author's reputation on both sides of the Atlantic, and the one that ties his name to New England.
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