WEBVTT 00:00:00.779 --> 00:00:03.160 Um, you know, when you close your eyes and picture 00:00:03.160 --> 00:00:07.099 a classic American poet, there's probably a very 00:00:07.099 --> 00:00:08.900 specific image that pops into your head. Oh, 00:00:08.900 --> 00:00:10.919 totally. The whole like grandpa in the woods 00:00:10.919 --> 00:00:13.939 vibe. Exactly. It's that guy with the messy white 00:00:13.939 --> 00:00:16.379 hair, maybe wearing, I don't know, a thick wool 00:00:16.379 --> 00:00:18.579 sweater that's a little frayed at the edges. 00:00:18.679 --> 00:00:20.760 And he's just wandering thoughtfully through 00:00:20.760 --> 00:00:22.780 the snowy woods of New England. Yeah. Looking 00:00:22.780 --> 00:00:25.660 at birch trees, fixing old stone walls. Right. 00:00:26.120 --> 00:00:29.379 And dispensing this very grandfatherly folksy 00:00:29.379 --> 00:00:32.560 wisdom about life and nature. It's basically 00:00:32.560 --> 00:00:34.939 the ultimate Yankee farmer archetype. I mean 00:00:34.939 --> 00:00:37.439 it's an image that feels as permanent to the 00:00:37.439 --> 00:00:39.880 American psyche as you know the rocky New England 00:00:39.880 --> 00:00:43.000 landscape itself. It really does. But today we 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:45.799 are taking a deep dive into a massive stack of 00:00:45.799 --> 00:00:48.380 biographical and literary sources covering the 00:00:48.380 --> 00:00:51.039 life and work of Robert Frost. And our mission 00:00:51.039 --> 00:00:53.719 today is to entirely shatter that cozy illusion. 00:00:53.939 --> 00:00:56.320 Because it really is an illusion. Oh, completely. 00:00:56.520 --> 00:00:58.960 That simplistic New England folky we all think 00:00:58.960 --> 00:01:02.079 we know. That was a masterfully crafted persona. 00:01:02.479 --> 00:01:04.219 What we're actually going on cover in these sources 00:01:04.219 --> 00:01:07.879 is a relentlessly resilient, highly calculating 00:01:07.879 --> 00:01:11.859 craftsman. A guy who forged profound art out 00:01:11.859 --> 00:01:15.189 of just... Absolutely unimaginable tragedy. It's 00:01:15.189 --> 00:01:16.629 a fascinating contradiction. I mean, the man 00:01:16.629 --> 00:01:19.250 who essentially defined the rural American spirit 00:01:19.250 --> 00:01:22.590 for the whole 20th century was hiding a reality 00:01:22.590 --> 00:01:25.469 that was, well, far darker and structurally way 00:01:25.469 --> 00:01:28.269 more complex than his casual readers ever suspected. 00:01:28.430 --> 00:01:30.730 OK, let's unpack this. Because the geographic 00:01:30.730 --> 00:01:32.969 and financial realities of his early life alone 00:01:32.969 --> 00:01:35.849 are just jarring. If I asked you listening to 00:01:35.849 --> 00:01:37.930 guess where Robert Frost was born, you'd probably 00:01:37.930 --> 00:01:40.209 say Vermont or New Hampshire. Right. Most people 00:01:40.209 --> 00:01:42.379 do. Yeah. But the sources reveal... a shocking 00:01:42.379 --> 00:01:45.019 truth. He actually grew up as a city kid in San 00:01:45.019 --> 00:01:47.439 Francisco. Quite the contrast from Snowy Woods. 00:01:47.840 --> 00:01:50.379 I mean seriously his dad was a journalist and 00:01:50.379 --> 00:01:53.000 this notoriously unsuccessful hard -drinking 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:55.819 politician out there. Frost didn't even set foot 00:01:55.819 --> 00:01:58.480 in New England until he's 11 years old and it 00:01:58.480 --> 00:02:00.819 gets better. He later went to both Dartmouth 00:02:00.819 --> 00:02:02.680 and Harvard but he actually dropped out of both 00:02:02.680 --> 00:02:05.319 of them. Which doesn't exactly fit the traditional 00:02:05.319 --> 00:02:08.419 academic poet image either. No not at all and 00:02:08.419 --> 00:02:12.060 that iconic rugged farmer image. Yeah. He spent 00:02:12.060 --> 00:02:15.039 nine years being an absolutely terrible failing 00:02:15.039 --> 00:02:17.340 farmer. It completely flips the script on his 00:02:17.340 --> 00:02:19.379 brand, doesn't it? It totally does. It's like, 00:02:19.400 --> 00:02:22.400 it's exactly like finding out your favorite gravelly 00:02:22.400 --> 00:02:24.939 -voiced country music singer actually grew up 00:02:24.939 --> 00:02:27.039 in a Manhattan penthouse. That's a great way 00:02:27.039 --> 00:02:29.800 to put it. It fundamentally changes how you view 00:02:29.800 --> 00:02:32.460 his authenticity. And for you listening, whether 00:02:32.460 --> 00:02:34.819 you're a serious literature -abuff dissecting 00:02:34.819 --> 00:02:38.139 meter or you just know the phrase, the road not 00:02:38.139 --> 00:02:42.250 taken from, like a motivational poster in your 00:02:42.250 --> 00:02:44.210 high school guidance counselor's office. We've 00:02:44.210 --> 00:02:46.770 all seen that poster. Right. But understanding 00:02:46.770 --> 00:02:49.310 of the real Robert Frost is going to fundamentally 00:02:49.310 --> 00:02:52.069 change how you read his work. It alters everything 00:02:52.069 --> 00:02:54.430 you think you know about artistic resilience. 00:02:54.729 --> 00:02:57.150 What's fascinating here is how deliberately he 00:02:57.150 --> 00:03:00.729 had to construct that rural identity. As he mentioned, 00:03:00.889 --> 00:03:04.870 he only moved to Massachusetts at age 11. we 00:03:04.870 --> 00:03:06.750 have to be clear that move across the country 00:03:06.750 --> 00:03:09.569 wasn't some idyllic return to nature. No, it 00:03:09.569 --> 00:03:11.909 was pretty grim. It was an act of pure desperation. 00:03:12.030 --> 00:03:14.490 It happened because his father died of tuberculosis, 00:03:14.830 --> 00:03:17.689 leaving the family essentially destitute. The 00:03:17.689 --> 00:03:19.530 sources note they crossed the entire country 00:03:19.530 --> 00:03:22.039 with a grand total of eight dollars to their 00:03:22.039 --> 00:03:25.000 name. Eight dollars. I mean, just try to conceptualize 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:26.759 the financial anxiety of that. It's impossible 00:03:26.759 --> 00:03:29.599 to imagine. That is pure survival mode. Precisely. 00:03:29.960 --> 00:03:32.319 So when Frost's grandfather eventually bought 00:03:32.319 --> 00:03:35.300 him a farm in Derry, New Hampshire, it wasn't 00:03:35.300 --> 00:03:37.259 this, you know, natural calling to the soil. 00:03:37.340 --> 00:03:40.199 It was a literal lifeline to keep them from starving. 00:03:40.460 --> 00:03:43.479 Right. And for nine years, Frost struggled daily 00:03:43.479 --> 00:03:46.580 to make that farm profitable, and he failed miserably. 00:03:46.979 --> 00:03:49.159 But from a literary standpoint, that failure 00:03:49.159 --> 00:03:51.319 is exactly what allowed him to observe rural 00:03:51.319 --> 00:03:53.919 life so intimately. How so? Because he was just 00:03:53.919 --> 00:03:57.009 stuck there. Basically, yeah. Because he wasn't 00:03:57.009 --> 00:03:59.389 good at the physical labor, he spent immense 00:03:59.389 --> 00:04:01.370 amounts of time just listening and watching. 00:04:01.930 --> 00:04:04.629 He wasn't out there writing pretty romanticized 00:04:04.629 --> 00:04:08.229 nature poems. He was using these bleak, isolated 00:04:08.229 --> 00:04:11.550 settings to examine really complex social and 00:04:11.550 --> 00:04:14.710 philosophical themes. So he was basically using 00:04:14.710 --> 00:04:16.990 the failing farm as a psychological laboratory. 00:04:17.189 --> 00:04:20.370 Yes, exactly. And in that laboratory, he was 00:04:20.370 --> 00:04:23.430 mastering a concept he famously called the Sound 00:04:23.430 --> 00:04:26.259 of Sense. The Sound of Sense. Yeah. He wasn't 00:04:26.259 --> 00:04:28.699 trying to sound like a wealthy Victorian poet 00:04:28.699 --> 00:04:31.139 with, you know, elevated artificial language. 00:04:31.480 --> 00:04:34.339 He wanted to capture the intricate rhythms, the 00:04:34.339 --> 00:04:37.120 hesitations, the exact intonations of actual 00:04:37.120 --> 00:04:38.980 spoken English. Like the way people actually 00:04:38.980 --> 00:04:41.019 talk. Right. Think of the sound of sense, like 00:04:41.019 --> 00:04:43.000 listening to a muffled argument through a cotel 00:04:43.000 --> 00:04:45.000 wall. Oh, I like that. You can't make out the 00:04:45.000 --> 00:04:47.279 specific words, but you completely understand 00:04:47.279 --> 00:04:49.579 the rhythm, the anger, the exhaustion, the pauses. 00:04:50.220 --> 00:04:53.199 Freust wanted to capture that raw spoken melody 00:04:53.199 --> 00:04:55.800 and trap it inside the strict rules of poetry. 00:04:56.259 --> 00:04:58.519 He wanted you to hear the genuine working class 00:04:58.519 --> 00:05:02.120 Yankee voice breathing on the page. And he clearly 00:05:02.120 --> 00:05:05.839 had a wry sense of humor about his lack of agricultural 00:05:05.839 --> 00:05:08.639 success later on. There's this lighter detail 00:05:08.639 --> 00:05:10.680 in the sources that I just love. Oh, about the 00:05:10.680 --> 00:05:13.660 Florida house. Yes. Years later, when he was 00:05:13.660 --> 00:05:16.319 wealthy and established, he bought a winter property 00:05:16.319 --> 00:05:19.889 in Florida. and he named it Pencil Pines. Pencil 00:05:19.889 --> 00:05:22.069 Pines? Yeah, he joked to his friends that he 00:05:22.069 --> 00:05:24.350 called it that because he had never made a single 00:05:24.350 --> 00:05:26.470 penny from anything that didn't involve the use 00:05:26.470 --> 00:05:29.170 of a pencil. That is a perfect encapsulation 00:05:29.170 --> 00:05:31.569 of his self -awareness. I mean, he knew exactly 00:05:31.569 --> 00:05:34.430 what he was, a brilliant writer who had merely 00:05:34.430 --> 00:05:36.769 played the role of a farmer. But here's where 00:05:36.769 --> 00:05:40.230 it gets really interesting. You have this guy... 00:05:40.079 --> 00:05:42.819 who has survived childhood poverty, he's failed 00:05:42.819 --> 00:05:44.860 at farming, he's desperately struggling to get 00:05:44.860 --> 00:05:47.680 his writing noticed. But the sources detail a 00:05:47.680 --> 00:05:49.779 personal life that was so relentlessly dark. 00:05:49.930 --> 00:05:52.550 It makes you wonder how he maintained his sanity, 00:05:52.889 --> 00:05:55.050 let alone his focus on capturing the sound of 00:05:55.050 --> 00:05:58.050 sense. Yeah, the sheer volume of grief this man 00:05:58.050 --> 00:06:00.790 endured is just staggering. It is genuinely difficult 00:06:00.790 --> 00:06:03.810 to comprehend how one person absorbs that much 00:06:03.810 --> 00:06:06.209 tragedy without completely collapsing. Let's 00:06:06.209 --> 00:06:08.269 just look at the list provided in the biographies. 00:06:08.829 --> 00:06:11.050 So his father dies of tuberculosis when Frost 00:06:11.050 --> 00:06:13.829 is a child. Right. Later, his mother dies of 00:06:13.829 --> 00:06:17.009 cancer. His wife, Eleanor, survives a brutal 00:06:17.009 --> 00:06:19.930 bout of breast cancer, only to die later of heart 00:06:19.930 --> 00:06:23.029 failure. And then the children. This is the hardest 00:06:23.029 --> 00:06:25.750 part to read about. It really is. Eleanor and 00:06:25.750 --> 00:06:28.689 Robert had six children. Only two of them outlived 00:06:28.689 --> 00:06:31.709 their father. He lost his firstborn son, Elliot, 00:06:32.110 --> 00:06:35.649 to cholera at age four. Another daughter, Marjorie, 00:06:35.889 --> 00:06:38.790 died from puerperal fever, which is this horrific 00:06:38.790 --> 00:06:41.769 infection just after childbirth. Another daughter 00:06:41.769 --> 00:06:45.160 died just one day after she was born. It's just 00:06:45.160 --> 00:06:49.399 a relentless barrage of death. You have to remember 00:06:49.399 --> 00:06:51.759 that physical loss is not even factoring in the 00:06:51.759 --> 00:06:53.939 severe mental illness that plagued the Frost 00:06:53.939 --> 00:06:57.420 family tree. Frost himself and his mother both 00:06:57.420 --> 00:06:59.980 suffered from severe depression. His wife experienced 00:06:59.980 --> 00:07:02.480 deep prolonged bouts of it too. And didn't he 00:07:02.480 --> 00:07:04.220 have to make some really tough decisions regarding 00:07:04.220 --> 00:07:06.740 his family's mental health? He did. He had to 00:07:06.740 --> 00:07:08.980 make the agonizing guilt -ridden decision to 00:07:08.980 --> 00:07:11.480 commit both his younger sister Jeannie and later 00:07:11.480 --> 00:07:14.139 his own daughter Irma to mental hospitals. I 00:07:14.139 --> 00:07:15.939 mean, think about that for a second. Imagine 00:07:15.939 --> 00:07:19.149 trying to create beautiful things. to write poetry 00:07:19.149 --> 00:07:22.089 that supposedly celebrates life while surrounded 00:07:22.089 --> 00:07:24.910 by that level of inescapable loss and instability. 00:07:25.850 --> 00:07:28.589 And that deep pervasive bleakness is the crucial 00:07:28.589 --> 00:07:31.589 context that early audiences completely missed. 00:07:31.790 --> 00:07:33.709 It just saw the grandfather figure. Exactly. 00:07:34.170 --> 00:07:36.550 Early on, casual readers and critics saw this 00:07:36.550 --> 00:07:39.329 traditional poet. They saw the snowy woods and 00:07:39.329 --> 00:07:41.089 the apple picking and thought it was charming. 00:07:41.399 --> 00:07:44.220 maybe a little nostalgic, but later critics, 00:07:44.480 --> 00:07:46.699 most notably Randall Jarrell in the mid -20th 00:07:46.699 --> 00:07:49.199 century, started looking closer at the mechanics 00:07:49.199 --> 00:07:51.620 of the poems. And what did Jarrell find? He pointed 00:07:51.620 --> 00:07:54.180 out that the regular folksy ways of looking at 00:07:54.180 --> 00:07:57.360 Frost were these grotesque simplifications of 00:07:57.360 --> 00:07:59.519 his actual work. So they were basically just 00:07:59.519 --> 00:08:01.300 looking at the surface imagery of the trees and 00:08:01.300 --> 00:08:04.420 the snow and ignoring the actual themes. Precisely. 00:08:04.720 --> 00:08:07.620 Jarrell helped readers recognize the dark Frost. 00:08:08.009 --> 00:08:11.170 This was a poet who was, in Gerald's words, desperate, 00:08:11.490 --> 00:08:14.470 frightened, and brave. Let's look at a poem like 00:08:14.470 --> 00:08:17.389 Desert Places. When you read it, you aren't just 00:08:17.389 --> 00:08:19.810 reading about a winter landscape at twilight. 00:08:20.269 --> 00:08:22.410 Frost describes looking out at a field covered 00:08:22.410 --> 00:08:25.689 in snow, watching the darkness fall, and realizing 00:08:25.689 --> 00:08:28.029 that the emptiness of the landscape mirrors his 00:08:28.029 --> 00:08:31.389 own internal void. Wow. Yeah. He's depicting 00:08:31.389 --> 00:08:34.149 the stark, terrifying loneliness of the individual 00:08:34.149 --> 00:08:37.009 in a completely indifferent universe. The universe 00:08:37.009 --> 00:08:38.990 doesn't care that your children died or that 00:08:38.990 --> 00:08:41.389 your farm is failing. It just keeps snowing. 00:08:41.669 --> 00:08:44.500 An indifferent universe? That is incredibly heavy. 00:08:45.019 --> 00:08:47.320 But what's so wild to me is that he didn't let 00:08:47.320 --> 00:08:50.419 that overwhelming darkness turn him bitter or 00:08:50.419 --> 00:08:52.639 cruel in his writing. No, he didn't. Like Harriet 00:08:52.639 --> 00:08:54.559 Monroe, who was a founding publisher of Poetry 00:08:54.559 --> 00:08:57.120 magazine, she noted that Frost somehow maintained 00:08:57.120 --> 00:08:59.860 a sympathetic humor toward his subjects. He didn't 00:08:59.860 --> 00:09:01.940 mock the struggling, poverty -stricken people 00:09:01.940 --> 00:09:04.899 in his poems. He understood their quiet desperation 00:09:04.899 --> 00:09:07.360 implicitly. Because he was one of them. He knew 00:09:07.360 --> 00:09:09.600 the madness that could creep in during a long, 00:09:09.740 --> 00:09:12.019 isolated New England winter when the crops failed 00:09:12.019 --> 00:09:14.639 and the kids were sick. But you bring up a crucial 00:09:14.639 --> 00:09:16.940 question. How did he process all this without 00:09:16.940 --> 00:09:19.059 just dissolving into despair? Yeah, how do you 00:09:19.059 --> 00:09:22.240 not just give up? The answer lies in his remarkably 00:09:22.240 --> 00:09:25.539 rigorous, classical approach to his craft. He 00:09:25.539 --> 00:09:27.960 didn't just pour his unfiltered grief onto the 00:09:27.960 --> 00:09:31.620 page in some chaotic mess. He built rigid, mathematical, 00:09:31.820 --> 00:09:34.360 poetic structures to contain it. OK, wait, I 00:09:34.360 --> 00:09:36.580 need to push back on that a little. Sure. dealing 00:09:36.580 --> 00:09:39.620 with all this raw, chaotic grief, the deaths 00:09:39.620 --> 00:09:42.980 of his kids. His sister's institutionalization 00:09:42.980 --> 00:09:45.919 wouldn't free verse, just like screaming his 00:09:45.919 --> 00:09:48.120 pain into the void be a more natural emotional 00:09:48.120 --> 00:09:51.659 release. Why trap that raw emotion inside a rhyming 00:09:51.659 --> 00:09:54.769 box? That is the exact tension at the heart of 00:09:54.769 --> 00:09:57.570 Frost's genius. If we connect this to the bigger 00:09:57.570 --> 00:10:00.210 picture of American literature at the time, his 00:10:00.210 --> 00:10:02.429 stance on poetic form is actually a rebellion. 00:10:02.690 --> 00:10:04.769 A rebellion against what? Against modernism. 00:10:05.029 --> 00:10:06.929 This was the era where poets were abandoning 00:10:06.929 --> 00:10:09.049 meter, embracing free verse, tearing down the 00:10:09.049 --> 00:10:11.049 old structures to reflect a fractured modern 00:10:11.049 --> 00:10:13.629 world. But Frost believed that if your internal 00:10:13.629 --> 00:10:16.309 world is chaotic and full of grief, the last 00:10:16.309 --> 00:10:18.610 thing you need is a chaotic poem. Oh, interesting. 00:10:18.690 --> 00:10:20.950 You need structure. You need a container. Ah, 00:10:21.029 --> 00:10:24.320 I see. like building a really sturdy levee to 00:10:24.320 --> 00:10:26.779 hold back a flood. Without the concrete walls 00:10:26.779 --> 00:10:28.860 of the levee, the water just destroys everything. 00:10:29.360 --> 00:10:32.200 That's a perfect analogy. The strict meter that 00:10:32.200 --> 00:10:36.240 de de de hume heartbeat, a viambic pentameter, 00:10:36.559 --> 00:10:39.529 acts as a psychological anchor. When you read, 00:10:39.549 --> 00:10:43.129 stopping by woods on a snowy evening, the steady, 00:10:43.470 --> 00:10:45.669 relentless walking pace of the rhythm is what 00:10:45.669 --> 00:10:47.690 keeps the narrator from giving up and simply 00:10:47.690 --> 00:10:50.190 wandering into the dark, freezing woods to die. 00:10:50.370 --> 00:10:52.730 That makes so much sense. And Frost famously 00:10:52.730 --> 00:10:54.990 quipped that writing free verse is like playing 00:10:54.990 --> 00:10:57.090 tennis without a net. Which is such a brilliant 00:10:57.090 --> 00:10:59.049 insult to his contemporaries, by the way. It 00:10:59.049 --> 00:11:01.669 really is. He believed that the self -imposed 00:11:01.669 --> 00:11:03.950 restrictions of meter and form were liberating. 00:11:04.250 --> 00:11:06.330 Because he had the structure, the net firmly 00:11:06.330 --> 00:11:08.549 in place, he could focus entirely on hitting 00:11:08.549 --> 00:11:11.309 the ball as hard as he could. The rigid structure 00:11:11.309 --> 00:11:13.730 of a sonnet kept the emotion from boiling over 00:11:13.730 --> 00:11:16.649 into pure, unearned sentimentality. And this 00:11:16.649 --> 00:11:19.950 brings up his incredible 1939 essay, The Figure 00:11:19.950 --> 00:11:23.129 a Poem Makes, where he lays out this exact philosophy. 00:11:23.250 --> 00:11:26.940 He wrote, and I love this, No tears in the writer, 00:11:27.259 --> 00:11:29.080 no tears in the reader, no surprise for the writer, 00:11:29.200 --> 00:11:31.779 no surprise for the reader. He believed that 00:11:31.779 --> 00:11:33.940 poetry is the surprise of remembering something 00:11:33.940 --> 00:11:37.379 I didn't know I knew. He's an inventing new grief. 00:11:37.620 --> 00:11:39.679 He's tapping into the grief you already have. 00:11:40.019 --> 00:11:42.659 Exactly. And that sturdy foundation of his didn't 00:11:42.659 --> 00:11:44.720 just come from nowhere. It goes back thousands 00:11:44.720 --> 00:11:48.000 of years. The sources highlight the work of classicist 00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:50.840 Helen H. Bacon, who discovered that Frost's rural 00:11:50.840 --> 00:11:53.379 imagery was actually deeply steeped in Greek 00:11:53.379 --> 00:11:55.779 and Roman literature. Wait, really? Oh, yeah. 00:11:55.820 --> 00:11:57.600 He wasn't just looking at a New England tree. 00:11:57.659 --> 00:12:00.000 He was looking at it through the lens of antiquity. 00:12:00.139 --> 00:12:02.299 How so? Give me an example of how a Greek myth 00:12:02.299 --> 00:12:05.389 ends up in a poem about New Hampshire. Take his 00:12:05.389 --> 00:12:08.090 famous poem, Birches. On the surface, it's a 00:12:08.090 --> 00:12:10.429 nostalgic poem about a boy swinging on flexible 00:12:10.429 --> 00:12:12.710 birch branches in the winter. But Bacon points 00:12:12.710 --> 00:12:14.909 out the tree imagery connects directly to the 00:12:14.909 --> 00:12:18.049 ancient Greek playwright Euripides, specifically 00:12:18.049 --> 00:12:21.289 his tragedy, the Baki, which Frost read in the 00:12:21.289 --> 00:12:23.750 original Greek. Okay, and what is the Baki about? 00:12:24.120 --> 00:12:26.700 It's fundamentally about the violent tension 00:12:26.700 --> 00:12:30.340 between chaotic, wild human instinct and strict 00:12:30.340 --> 00:12:33.820 societal control. When people repress their wildness 00:12:33.820 --> 00:12:37.059 too much, it explodes into madness. So the kid 00:12:37.059 --> 00:12:39.399 swinging on the tree. Is a controlled release 00:12:39.399 --> 00:12:42.399 of that chaos. The boy climbs the birch tree 00:12:42.399 --> 00:12:45.240 to briefly escape the hard, painful reality of 00:12:45.240 --> 00:12:48.100 the earth to swing out into the wild, chaotic 00:12:48.100 --> 00:12:52.139 air. but crucially the flexible birch tree bends 00:12:52.139 --> 00:12:54.519 and gently deposits him right back on the ground. 00:12:54.659 --> 00:12:57.759 Oh wow. It's a profound mediation on the desire 00:12:57.759 --> 00:13:00.700 to escape a painful life, but ultimately realizing 00:13:00.700 --> 00:13:03.320 that, as Frost writes, Earth's the right place 00:13:03.320 --> 00:13:06.259 for love. He is translating the deep psychological 00:13:06.259 --> 00:13:09.259 mechanisms of Euripides into the Yankee vernacular. 00:13:09.639 --> 00:13:12.080 That is amazing. But ironically, you'd think 00:13:12.080 --> 00:13:14.600 this incredible fusion of classical Greek themes 00:13:14.600 --> 00:13:17.299 and accessible Yankee dialect would make it an 00:13:17.299 --> 00:13:19.720 instant star in America, but it didn't. Not at 00:13:19.720 --> 00:13:21.799 all. To get America to notice his fundamentally 00:13:21.799 --> 00:13:24.340 American voice, he had to do the most counterintuitive 00:13:24.340 --> 00:13:26.019 thing possible. He had to pack up his family 00:13:26.019 --> 00:13:28.840 and move to England in 1912. It's a classic case 00:13:28.840 --> 00:13:31.240 of having to leave home to be recognized by your 00:13:31.240 --> 00:13:33.929 own people. And his time in England was highly 00:13:33.929 --> 00:13:36.950 consequential for a few reasons. First, he met 00:13:36.950 --> 00:13:39.529 Ezra Pound, who was essentially the powerful 00:13:39.529 --> 00:13:41.950 gatekeeper of the modernist movement. Right. 00:13:42.190 --> 00:13:44.570 Pound was a huge deal. He was. And Pound was 00:13:44.570 --> 00:13:46.690 actually the first American to write a favorable 00:13:46.690 --> 00:13:49.750 review of Frost's work, which helped launch him. 00:13:49.929 --> 00:13:52.809 But Frost ended up deeply resenting Pound, right? 00:13:53.230 --> 00:13:54.929 Like, he didn't want to be part of Pound's club. 00:13:55.009 --> 00:13:58.299 He absolutely resented him. Pound was notorious 00:13:58.299 --> 00:14:00.940 for trying to aggressively edit and manipulate 00:14:00.940 --> 00:14:03.480 the styles of the Poetsie champion. He wanted 00:14:03.480 --> 00:14:07.379 to mold Frost. But Frost, having survived everything 00:14:07.379 --> 00:14:10.399 he had survived, was far too fiercely independent 00:14:10.399 --> 00:14:12.279 for that. He wasn't going to let anyone mess 00:14:12.279 --> 00:14:15.419 with his style. Exactly. He refused to let Pound 00:14:15.419 --> 00:14:18.100 alter his American prosody. He wouldn't let Pound 00:14:18.100 --> 00:14:20.340 mess with the specific rhythm of that New England 00:14:20.340 --> 00:14:22.960 voice he had worked so hard to perfect. He protected 00:14:22.960 --> 00:14:26.440 the sound of sense. He did. But perhaps the most 00:14:26.440 --> 00:14:28.279 important connection he made in England wasn't 00:14:28.279 --> 00:14:30.659 a rivalry. It was a deep friendship with the 00:14:30.659 --> 00:14:33.259 British poet Edward Thomas. They used to take 00:14:33.259 --> 00:14:36.360 these long rambling walks in the English countryside 00:14:36.360 --> 00:14:39.519 together. And Thomas was notoriously comically 00:14:39.519 --> 00:14:41.580 indecisive about which path they should take. 00:14:41.899 --> 00:14:43.580 He was always worrying they were missing out 00:14:43.580 --> 00:14:46.179 on better flora or a better view on another route. 00:14:46.759 --> 00:14:48.740 Oh, don't tell me that Edward Thomas being annoying 00:14:48.740 --> 00:14:51.000 on a walk is the origin of what I think it is. 00:14:51.139 --> 00:14:53.899 It is. Edward Thomas's indecision during those 00:14:53.899 --> 00:14:56.820 walks was the literal, gentle inspiration for 00:14:56.820 --> 00:15:00.279 Frost's most famous poem, The Road Not Taken. 00:15:00.620 --> 00:15:03.159 That is absolutely amazing. A poem that millions 00:15:03.159 --> 00:15:05.639 of people wouldn't legitimately interpret as 00:15:05.639 --> 00:15:09.019 this grand, solemn anthem of rugged individualism, 00:15:09.340 --> 00:15:11.259 you know, taking the road less traveled, was 00:15:11.259 --> 00:15:13.580 originally just a private joke aimed at a friend 00:15:13.580 --> 00:15:15.740 who couldn't pick a walking path. Precisely. 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:17.820 Frost even tried to warn people that it was a 00:15:17.820 --> 00:15:20.059 tricky poem, but the public just ran with it. 00:15:20.059 --> 00:15:22.159 And it proves Frost's point. No surprise for 00:15:22.159 --> 00:15:24.440 the writer, no surprise for the reader. The poem 00:15:24.440 --> 00:15:26.820 transcends its origin because it taps into that 00:15:26.820 --> 00:15:29.580 universal human anxiety about the choices we 00:15:29.580 --> 00:15:31.940 make. So what does this all mean for his legacy? 00:15:32.620 --> 00:15:35.340 How does a guy writing traditional metered verse 00:15:35.340 --> 00:15:38.720 about birches and snowy evenings, dealing with 00:15:38.720 --> 00:15:41.340 unimaginable personal tragedy and making jokes 00:15:41.340 --> 00:15:44.139 about his friends become essentially a monument 00:15:44.139 --> 00:15:46.240 of American culture? It's quite the journey. 00:15:46.490 --> 00:15:48.529 Because the accolades he eventually gathered 00:15:48.529 --> 00:15:51.129 back in the States are just absurd. I mean, he 00:15:51.129 --> 00:15:54.250 won four Pulitzer Prizes. He was awarded a Congressional 00:15:54.250 --> 00:15:57.129 Gold Medal. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize 00:15:57.129 --> 00:15:59.970 in Literature 31 times without winning. 31 times. 00:16:00.049 --> 00:16:03.149 And he became the U .S. poet laureate. He transcended 00:16:03.149 --> 00:16:05.830 the role of a mere poet to become what the sources 00:16:05.830 --> 00:16:09.389 appropriately call an artistic institution. He 00:16:09.389 --> 00:16:11.889 successfully merged those profound classical 00:16:11.889 --> 00:16:15.289 themes of grief, survival, and cosmic indifference 00:16:15.289 --> 00:16:17.830 with an accessible language that felt uniquely, 00:16:18.169 --> 00:16:20.509 comfortingly American. And the ultimate proof 00:16:20.509 --> 00:16:23.730 of his monumental status has to be the 1961 inauguration 00:16:23.730 --> 00:16:25.350 of President John F. Kennedy. Oh, absolutely. 00:16:25.549 --> 00:16:28.710 Picture this right. Frost is 86 years old. He's 00:16:28.710 --> 00:16:30.610 up there at the podium in the freezing cold, 00:16:30.610 --> 00:16:32.990 and he's actually written a brand new poem for 00:16:32.990 --> 00:16:36.429 the occasion called Dedication. But the sun's 00:16:36.429 --> 00:16:39.570 glare is so bright off the fresh snow, he literally 00:16:39.570 --> 00:16:42.210 can't read his own manuscript. Talk about stressful. 00:16:42.389 --> 00:16:45.629 Right. So without missing a beat, this 86 -year 00:16:45.629 --> 00:16:49.029 -old man pivots flawlessly and recites his older 00:16:49.029 --> 00:16:52.389 poem, The Gift Outright, entirely from memory, 00:16:52.809 --> 00:16:55.049 projecting his voice out over the whole world. 00:16:55.509 --> 00:16:57.730 It's a moment of incredible poise and mental 00:16:57.730 --> 00:17:00.659 sharpness. And remarkably, he wasn't done trying 00:17:00.659 --> 00:17:03.919 to influence the world stage. Oh, right. In 1962, 00:17:04.180 --> 00:17:06.140 at the age of 88, during the absolute height 00:17:06.140 --> 00:17:08.700 of the Cold War, he travels to the Soviet Union. 00:17:08.920 --> 00:17:12.160 At 88. Yeah. He goes over to lobby Premier Nikita 00:17:12.160 --> 00:17:14.779 Khrushchev for peaceful relations, just impartially 00:17:14.779 --> 00:17:16.740 reporting the history here. But he was literally 00:17:16.740 --> 00:17:18.759 trying to use his moral authority as an American 00:17:18.759 --> 00:17:21.710 poet to prevent global nuclear war. This raises 00:17:21.710 --> 00:17:23.930 an important question, though. It's easy to see 00:17:23.930 --> 00:17:26.289 why a young president like JFK might want to 00:17:26.289 --> 00:17:28.470 associate with that kind of historical gravitas. 00:17:28.950 --> 00:17:32.369 But why does a poet born in 1874 still completely 00:17:32.369 --> 00:17:34.930 dominate modern media today? That's a great point. 00:17:35.029 --> 00:17:37.130 Why does he endure not just in political history 00:17:37.130 --> 00:17:40.769 books, but in everyday pop culture? Oh, his cultural 00:17:40.769 --> 00:17:43.710 reach is wild. And the sources give so many great 00:17:43.710 --> 00:17:47.190 examples of this. His fingerprints are literally 00:17:47.190 --> 00:17:50.549 everywhere. Where do we even start? Let's take 00:17:50.549 --> 00:17:55.089 the poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay. It's an incredibly 00:17:55.089 --> 00:17:56.950 short poem about how the first green of spring 00:17:56.950 --> 00:17:59.990 is actually gold, but it fades quickly. That 00:17:59.990 --> 00:18:02.529 poem anchors the classic novel and film, The 00:18:02.529 --> 00:18:06.049 Outsiders. Stay gold, Pony Boy. Exactly. Pony 00:18:06.049 --> 00:18:08.230 Boy literally recites it to Johnny to explain 00:18:08.230 --> 00:18:10.089 the fleeting nature of their youth and innocence. 00:18:10.509 --> 00:18:12.609 But it's also the title of an album by the pop 00:18:12.609 --> 00:18:15.609 -punk band Newfound Glory. It's referenced heavily 00:18:15.609 --> 00:18:18.730 by the Swedish folk duo First Aid Kid. Lana Del 00:18:18.730 --> 00:18:21.029 Rey quotes it in her single Venice Bitch. And 00:18:21.029 --> 00:18:23.410 then you have a poem like Fire and Ice, which 00:18:23.410 --> 00:18:26.210 is a terrifyingly calm meditation on how the 00:18:26.210 --> 00:18:28.710 world will end, whether by the heat of human 00:18:28.710 --> 00:18:31.890 passion and desire or the coldness of human hatred 00:18:31.890 --> 00:18:33.869 and indifference. Yeah, that one is chilling. 00:18:34.089 --> 00:18:36.650 It is. And that poem directly influenced the 00:18:36.650 --> 00:18:38.849 title and the core thematic tension of Jordar 00:18:38.849 --> 00:18:41.720 Martin's massive fantasy series A Song of Ice 00:18:41.720 --> 00:18:45.059 and Fire. Oh, Game of Thrones. Yes, it maps perfectly 00:18:45.059 --> 00:18:48.339 onto Westeros, exploring those dual apocalyptic 00:18:48.339 --> 00:18:51.619 threats. It's quoted in the Twilight Saga. It's 00:18:51.619 --> 00:18:53.740 recited in narrative video games like Life is 00:18:53.740 --> 00:18:56.480 Strange and post -apocalyptic shows like AMC's 00:18:56.480 --> 00:18:59.259 Into the Badlands. It's incredible. You have 00:18:59.259 --> 00:19:01.880 angsty teenagers shouting his lyrics at pop -punk 00:19:01.880 --> 00:19:05.640 concerts and massive fantasy fanbases, dissecting 00:19:05.640 --> 00:19:08.339 his words for plot clues about dragons and ice 00:19:08.339 --> 00:19:11.420 zombies. Why does his work translate so seamlessly 00:19:11.420 --> 00:19:14.950 to so many different modern mediums. I think 00:19:14.950 --> 00:19:16.650 it comes back to the dual nature of his work 00:19:16.650 --> 00:19:18.509 that we've been discussing from the start. The 00:19:18.509 --> 00:19:20.789 language is simple and accessible enough to be 00:19:20.789 --> 00:19:23.170 grasped instantly by a teenager reading The Outsiders 00:19:23.170 --> 00:19:25.450 for the first time. Right. But the psychological 00:19:25.450 --> 00:19:27.829 mechanisms behind the words that profound understanding 00:19:27.829 --> 00:19:31.029 of grief, loss, and survival are dark and complex 00:19:31.029 --> 00:19:33.589 enough to anchor a massive geopolitical fantasy 00:19:33.589 --> 00:19:36.109 epic. Frost understood that beneath the surface 00:19:36.109 --> 00:19:38.130 of everyday life, beneath the apple picking and 00:19:38.130 --> 00:19:41.289 the snowy woods, there is a profound, often terrifying 00:19:41.289 --> 00:19:44.430 depth. His work endures because his epitaph which 00:19:44.430 --> 00:19:47.130 he took from his own poem remains a universal 00:19:47.130 --> 00:19:50.349 human experience. Etched on his tombstone it 00:19:50.349 --> 00:19:53.730 reads, I had a lover's quarrel with the world. 00:19:54.210 --> 00:19:57.349 A lover's quarrel with the world. That is so 00:19:57.349 --> 00:20:00.369 perfect. It captures that agonizing tension between 00:20:00.369 --> 00:20:03.210 deeply loving the beauty of existence and being 00:20:03.210 --> 00:20:06.349 continuously wounded by it. Perfectly said. So 00:20:06.349 --> 00:20:08.470 to briefly recap the journey we've taken today, 00:20:09.029 --> 00:20:11.609 we started by dismantling the cozy myth of the 00:20:11.609 --> 00:20:14.309 folksy Yankee farmer and uncovered a financially 00:20:14.309 --> 00:20:16.349 ruined city kid who crossed the country with 00:20:16.349 --> 00:20:18.970 eight bucks. We walked through a crucible of 00:20:18.970 --> 00:20:21.269 unimaginable family tragedy and mental illness 00:20:21.269 --> 00:20:23.849 and saw how a stubborn craftsman took that pain 00:20:23.849 --> 00:20:26.430 and played tennis with a net. Using the strict 00:20:26.430 --> 00:20:28.990 mathematical forms of poetry to contain his grief 00:20:28.990 --> 00:20:30.769 when a lesser writer would have just shattered. 00:20:31.470 --> 00:20:34.250 Exactly. And ultimately, we saw how he fused 00:20:34.250 --> 00:20:36.369 ancient Greek philosophy with the muffled sound 00:20:36.369 --> 00:20:39.230 of Yankee arguments to become an American icon 00:20:39.230 --> 00:20:41.609 whose words influence everything from presidential 00:20:41.609 --> 00:20:44.789 inaugurations to modern pop music. He built a 00:20:44.789 --> 00:20:46.990 legacy that is just as enduring and structurally 00:20:46.990 --> 00:20:49.190 sound as the stone walls he so carefully wrote 00:20:49.190 --> 00:20:51.609 about. And as we wrap up this deep dive, I want 00:20:51.609 --> 00:20:53.789 to leave you listening with a final thought to 00:20:53.789 --> 00:20:57.029 mull over. building on Frost's concept of poetic 00:20:57.029 --> 00:20:59.710 revelation. I want you to think about the art, 00:20:59.990 --> 00:21:02.730 the music, or the writing that hits you the absolute 00:21:02.730 --> 00:21:05.309 hardest in your own life. When you encounter 00:21:05.309 --> 00:21:07.769 that truly great piece of art, does it actually 00:21:07.769 --> 00:21:10.009 teach you something completely brand new? Or, 00:21:10.109 --> 00:21:12.289 as Robert Frost fiercely believed, does it just 00:21:12.289 --> 00:21:14.269 finally give voice to a secret truth you've carried 00:21:14.269 --> 00:21:15.329 inside you all along?