Robert Frost Books

The book arrived in great condition. It was a gift for my granddaughter and she's enjoying it!

For all who have been captivated by Robert Frost's poetry, Peter Stanlis's break-through book "The Poet as Philosopher" offers a unique overview of the philosophical underpinnings that shed a clear light on the issues and beliefs imbedded in Frost's poetry. Other scholars have chosen to view Frost primarily as a monist, that is either as a God-centered spiritualist or a science-based materialist, quoting passage after passage of his poetry in support of their positions. But Stanlis squarely faces what Frost called "contraries." In this book, Stanlis presents a convincing array of evidence for Frost as a dualist. In his first chapter, Stanlis sets his own high standard for what "is required for a thorough and valid comprehension of Frost's dualism." "Nothing short," he maintains, "of a complete natural history of his life and thought."
And that is precisely what he gives us in this monumental study of everything that Frost said, thought, did, and wrote relevant to his philosophical thinking, correlating it all to such thinkers as Darwin, the Huxleys, Lovejoy, and Einstein, and to such fields as education, religion, science, politics, and poetics.
At the same time, his book is a concise review of Western philosophy all the way from the Greeks to quantum physics. As an esteemed scholar of Edmund Burke, Stanlis's perspective of the field is masterful. No one is better qualified to write about Frost and philosophy than Stanlis who combines his academic expertise with the direct experience he had with Frost's thoughts during their long friendship.
According to Stanlis, Frost's dualism rejects the resolution of reality into oneness, but views the world in pairs of opposition that are never completely resolved. His "melancholy dualism" is balanced in a sort of play. The sense of play permeates his poetry and way of looking at life. Stanlis presents us with a Frost who had a very eclectic but sophisticated and far reaching world view.
As someone who has taught Frost's poetry in the college classroom for over thirty years, I know the myriad questions that inevitably come up about what did Frost really believe. This book provides insights that can help Frost readers better understand the poet they already respond to and admire. The necessarily complex ideas Stanlis covers are organized effectively. They are expressed clearly and concisely without the jargon often associated with philosophical writing. Dr. Peter Stanlis has combined meticulous scholarship with what he learned from his personal friendship with Frost to write a much needed book, one that provides a valuable new perspective for academics but is also meaningful and accessible for the general reader. I highly recommend it to all who want to deepen their appreciation of Frost the poet and to enrich their understanding of one aspect of Frost that has too often been overlooked, his philosophical beliefs.

Poet and critic H. A. Maxson has written the first critical book on the sonnets of Robert Frost. Maxson's scholarship is sound, and newcomers to the sonnet form will find his work valuable, for Maxson explains how and why these poems qualify, even today, as genuine sonnets.

There are 37 sonnets in Frost's canon, according to Maxson. Some are true sonnets in the traditional sense while others are variants. Nevertheless, all 37 have 14 lines, schematic rhyme patterns, and the customary "turn" of meaning or intent.

The format of On The Sonnets is easy to follow. Each poem is evaluated in the order that it was collected and published, and following each is a fully developed critical inquiry. Finally, Mr. Maxson provides informative readings of Frost's nine posthumously published sonnets.

H. A. Maxson is, readers should know, the author of hundreds ofpublished and collected poems. So he is able and willing to address his examinations to writers as well as readers. While On the Sonnets of Robert Frost is indeed a "critical examination," all readers will find Maxson's criticism clearly set forth, fully referenced, and deeply insightful.

This is without a doubt the best book I have ever read. It was a wonderful blend of adventure and fantasy. It was the first book I ever read that I sincerely enjoyed.

This book has opend up my eyes. Robert Frost is in my mind one of the best potes in the world.

Visiting Frost: Poems Inspired By The Life And Work Of Robert Frost is an anthology of poems by one hundred different poets in homage to four-time Pulitzer Prize winner poet Robert Frost (1874-1963), known for associating his work with the landscape and life in New England, and whose verse includes such famous works as "The Road Not Taken" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". Each poet is given a one-paragraph biography at the end. The many brief poems assembled speak to different aspects of the character of Frost, who was often dark and intense in mood and writing. A treasury that reflects profoundly upon Frost's contributions to literature and our understanding of the human condition. A Farm in the Green Mountains: Stone upon stone / this weathered wall of stone / was built by men deviled by stone / from poor fields yielding mostly stone. // Stone upon stone / this Vermont wall of stone / was the sure employment of stone / in a place that is shaped by stone. // Stone upon stone / this ragged wall of stone / was a grudging tribute to stone / by farmers making peace with stone.

Had seen and read this book while visiting in a third grade classroom. The poem, of course, was familiar but the illustration of this particular book were wonderful. Bought the book for my husband for Valentine's day and he is a fond of it as I am. We're looking forward to reading it to our youngest grandchild.

of course the poem is lovely and the book presents it beautifully. i bought it for a baby whose mother will read it over and over...and i'm getting one for me.

Illustrations and subtle backgrounds on each page add imagination to this already beautiful poem. Children will later remember this book as a favorite childhood experience.

This is my very favorite Robert Frost poem. The incredible illustrations in this book bring it to life in a very special way. This book is nothing short of inspiring and one that I will share over and over again with those I love.... young and old!

The poem "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" is certainly open to any person's individual interpreation. However, by illustrating it and turning it into a children's book, one is imposing a rather 'childish' interpretation on a poem which can have a deeper meaning. Perhaps there is some literature that should be left for kids to explore when they are older instead of trying to "dumb down" everything and hence lose its impact and meaning.

Willa Cather is one of the top five American writers. She gets little notice, it seems, today. I find that very strange, given the feminist movement in America. I've read three of her other books and this is the oddest, and most wonderful, or perhaps I forget how O Pioneers, Death Comes for the Archbishop and My Antonia affected me so greatly.

Nothing seems to happens in her books and yet they blow me away and I remember them always. I do not exaggerate that they haunt me. I know that sounds dramatic, but that is what a good book does.

I struggled with this book. I'd read twenty pages, put it down for weeks, come back and read twenty more pages and then, finally I said I was going to finish it. As I was starting to read the last sixty pages -- it is a short book -- I was thinking to myself: 'I'm sorry I ever started to read this.' I was merely finishing it as a sense of duty. But then, the last thirty-five pages had me by my heart and it 'explained' all that I had plodded through previously.

I don't know if I can recommend this book. I'd fear that it would bore to tears any friend who would read it. But for me, it's effect is monumental --- and it has been a while that I can say that about most books I've read. I suspect that this book does not move younger readers as it does older readers, as it is a summing up of a man's life and how he has lived it. I'm not sure that a person who has not put many years into living would understand Miss Cather's brilliance in how she does this through --ironically--a quite ordinary professor's life.

I've been reading some of the Cather books and have enjoyed all of them. The best part of this book is her story within a story technique. Her descriptions of the American southwest are outstanding. This book held my attention, especially as it progressed. It is not as good as "My Antonia", which to me is her all time best, but it is an excellent reading experience.

I am a huge Willa Cather fan and have been reading her novels in the order she wrote them. I started "The Professor's House" in eager anticipation, because I just LOVED "A Lost Lady," the book that preceded it.

"The Professor's House" has many, many good elements, but ultimately I was disappointed. The last part of the book was unworthy of what had gone before. In the end, I felt as though I'd invested a lot in the Professor and that that investment had not paid off. I'm glad I read it, but think it's nowhere close to one of Cather's best.

I thought the first two section of the book were excellent. I believed almost everything about the Professor's life and his relationships. My only criticism of the beginning portion of the novel was Cather's superficial and, yes, bigoted attitude toward the Jewish son-in-law, Louie Marsellus. I didn't have a problem accepting Louie as a real person. But Cather could only see him and comment on him as "the other." One of Cather's great strengths is her understanding of how the world looks to the different characters in her novels. She may not agree with who they are and how they act, but she is usually deeply empathetic. Not so with Louie. The fact that he is a Jew is somehow taken as an explanation for everything. Even in 1925, I expect better of a writer of Cather's insight and talent. Interestingly, Louie is ultimately one of the most sympathetic and generous characters in the novel. But Cather writes as though she'd never had a close Jewish friend, or never applied her prodigious imagination to contemplate Louie's psychology and point of view.

Still, even with the problem with Louie, I thought the first book was very good. It was filled with the wonderful writing and the psychological, sociological and philosophical depth that I so admire in Cather.

I also enjoyed the second book, Tom Outland's story. I agree with an earlier reviewer that the section set in Washington, D.C. was particularly good. I was raised in Washington, and my mother's family has lived there since the 1840's. Cather just NAILED the town.

But it all came to a crashing halt in the final section, when we return to the Professor's story. Did Cather lose interest? Did she not know where to go with the Professor? This section was too short and undeveloped. The first two parts of the book deserved a more thorough and satisfying conclusion. I particularly objected to the section about how the Professor had gotten back in touch with the unthinking boy he'd been back in Kansas. Hogwash. Not credible. This guy's an intellectual. He might come to see the limits of what many academics pretentiously call "the life of the mind." But jettison it entirely for some romantic, unreal Tom Sawyer fantasy? I don't think so.

My advice: do read "The Professor's House," but don't make it your first Cather book.

Those expecting something as vivid and moving as "My Antonia" will be sorely disappointed by this book. Ms. Cather was at her worst when she wrote in imitation of earlier lady novelists such as Edith Wharton or Henry James, and the entire first half of this novel concerns the intrigues of a Midwest Brahmin family. During this part there is absolutely no plot, just tedious description and some of the most stilted dialogue ever written. The cardboard characters include the good-natured protagonist, Professor St. James, and his two daughters, one sweet (Cordelia?) and one rapacious (Goneril?). The bad daughter is lolling in luxury due to the avaricious machinations of her husband, who, naturally, is a Jew - a stereotypical Jew, the worst kind.

If that weren't bad enough, when a plot is finally introduced it concerns a preposterous device (or substance) called "the Outland vacuum" which is said to concern bulkheads and be a boon to aviation. It seems as though the novel will now hinge on the moral issue of who is entitled to the rewards for this great discovery (the Outland vacuum may also be a gas), but I suspect that at this point Ms. Cather realized that she had gone in over her head, and the novel comes to a sudden halt. The next page begins a second novel, about as bad as the first but which takes place among cowboys out West who discover a lost Indian city.

Alas, this likewise amounts to little, and we eventually return to the warmhearted professor who comes to the good-ol' American conclusion that being rich and famous is not all it's cracked up to be, and real happiness is found among the plain folk.

Y'know, people, just because something is old and ostensibly literature doesn't mean it's really great. My only worry is that schoolkids will be forced to read this - under the theory that classic fiction is "good" for them - and they will thus be alienated from reading books because they're so dull.

I read My Antonia and loved it so much that I consider it one of my favorite books. And, that's why I really really really wanted to like this book. But after giving it a chance for about 218 pages, I couldn't bear it any longer.

The problems I have with this book are as follows:

1) I understand the book's plot of the professor trying to find meaning in his life. That's the book I was looking for. The problem is that the Tom Outland character does not get you there and most of the text of the book is on this character.

2) Which brings me to my biggest gripe about this book, and Cather in particular. Cather cannot, to save her life, write a believable male character. Tom Outland is supposed to be an orphaned boy turned cowboy around the turn of the century, but Cather managed to make him out to be so unbelievably feminine that I found myself in wonder at how little she knows about men. She holds Outland out to be the hero of the story, the inspiration behind the Professor's motivation. That's fine, but if I'm supposed to conclude the Professor part of the story, then I have to buy Outland's character and it's just not possible. Here are some examples of Cather not being believable:

a) When she describes Tom Outland's hands through the professor's eyes, she describes them as beautiful and delicate. Worse still, she bothers to describe them in detail. Men don't do that.

b) Around page 218 when she begins Outland's tirade against Blake she makes Outland sound off like a nagging wife about how Blake shouldn't have sold the pottery etc. Men don't argue this way with friends; they don't have hissy fits - they stay quiet!

c) After the argument in (b) above, as Blake leaves the scene, she describes Outland wishing to run after him and hold him in his arms. Men just don't think like that.

d) When Outland is in Washington D.C. trying to get people to take interest in the pottery he discovered, he lets himself get ignored, disrespected, and he waits by tolerantly while being stepped on by people in positions of power. That's not a description of a turn of the century orphaned cowboy; that's a description of a turn of the century well-to-do woman of society - the only world Cather appears to know.

e) Whenever Tom Outland meets other men in his life as a cowboy, they are always really "nice and pleasant". Indeed they are overly accommodating. Huh? I could see cowboys being really respectful and accommodating to a beautiful woman of society (like Cather) but an orphaned cowboy? She just puts too much of herself in this character. I couldn't buy it.

3) Now before reviewers think my gripes are based on some sort of homophobia, let me just say that if it had been a story about men in love with each other, I would have accepted that as at least being believable. But that's not Cather's intention. Outland ends up marrying the professor's daughter. Is Cather trying to send out a bisexual message of some kind? Was the professor gay? The text just does not support any kind of homosexual message either explicitly or implicitly.

4) Cather plays out Outland to be this super human being. Indeed he is the inspiration to the Professor and all the other characters in the book. But if that's the case, why is he on the wrong side of the moral debate on the Dreyfus affair? Cather wrote this book in 1925; twenty five years after all the facts had already come out on that case and yet Cather has Outland take the side of bigots?

5) In Outland's tirade against Blake, Outland chews him out for selling ancient pottery belonging to native Indian tribes. Earlier in the book it's concluded that the tribe was decimated by outsiders. In chastising Blake, Outland declares that Blake was wrong to sell the pottery because it was not his. He says that the pottery belongs to his country, to the State etc. That's the best our hero can do? Wouldn't the right thing to do be to leave the ruins to themselves and not dig up the belongings of the decimated people - i.e. let them rest in peace?

Anyway, I was sorely disappointed. I gave The Professor's House one star more than it deserves only because My Antonia deserves six.

Textbook as described, good shape, no marks or highlights. Quick delivery and good price, thanks! Purchased for class, but really enjoy some of the readings, great collection of authors.

I don't have any complaints. The book was brand new, so of course there were no problems with it. The book was delivered in a timely manner.

I purchased these volumes of the anthology for school and, while I am not generally a fan of reading out of anthologies, this whole set has been very beneficial. I plan on keeping them after I finish the class in order to use them when I become an English teacher. The author introductions are helpful and insightful, providing sufficient background on the writer so that the reader may better understand each story by having a basic knowledge of what the author was experiencing in his or her life. The footnotes areexcellent, giving definitions of archaic words and phrases that might not otherwise be found without extensive search into the customs of the English language. Overall, this was a good purchase, and I will use it often in the future.

Another too thick, too heavy, too expensive textbook anthology of American literature. There're FAR too many selections to cover in a university survey course (which is all these books are good for--no one would read them for pleasure!) and a lot of them are pretty mediocre. When will these dinosaurs collapse under their own weight and some enlightened editors come up with something truly useful, meaningful, and inspiring? No wonder the reading public is is shrinking--these obese anthologies destroy any desire to read and study literature.

The college bookstore was TOO busy this semester. I took a couple of minutes and LOTS OF FAITH in ordering the volumes on-line. This order was shipped and at my home before I could blink!

Reading Robert Frost just enriches your life. He writes with incredible color and unusual grace. The hardcover is totally worth it.

I have read Robert Frost's poetry for years. There's nothing better than being curled up on the sofa on a cold afternoon drinking hot cocoa, and browsing through a Robert Frost poem book to warm your heart. For years I had been looking for a complete collection of Robert Frost's poems. I'm glad I found it a Amazon.

Robert Frost has a world-wide admiration. And in this book, you can find all his poems grouped neatly in sections connecting them to the place they are written in. So to put it in a nut shell, it is just what you are looking for if you want to buy something you won't regret.

Frost's poetry is like the essence of New England's North Country-it's sparseness, praticality, absence of frills, fall color, winter bleakness but strong, independent confidence. Yet in both the North Country and in Frost's poetry there is an underlying complexity and an openness to unfettered interpretations. This book delivers Frost's work in a simple, straightforward manner. His poetry needs no fancy presentation but then neither does the North Country. Visit both, but especially Frost.

A warning-it may be best to read only one or two poems a day. The more time each is thought about, the more it grows in depth and thought complexity-or doesn't....

I wonder how long it will be before Frost's literary stock is devalued as much as it deserves to be. These are trite and banal poems that do not ring true or sincere. Frost seems distant from both his poems and the reader. What he has to say is obvious and unoriginal. How he says it is on the level of a hallmark greeting card at its best; at its worst, it is no better than a limerick. Posthumous revelations about his horrific cruelty to others and his shrewd creation/manipulation of his celebrity image as the New England farmer-poet only confirm that there was something seriously wrong with this man and his poems that an earlier generation missed. How earlier generations could find genius in such obvious observations is astounding.
Bad poetry from a twisted man.