Proms Plus Literary - Robert Frost

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2014

⏱️ 22 minutes

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Summary

In 1914 the American poet Robert Frost published his collection 'North of Boston'. It was hailed as 'one of the most revolutionary books of modern times' by the English poet Edward Thomas. Matthew Hollis, who has written about the friendship between the two writers, is joined by Frost's biographer Jay Parini to discuss the poet. This programme presented by Matthew Sweet, was recorded in front of an audience at The Royal College of Music as part of the BBC Proms. To find out further information about the events which are free to attended go to bbc.co.uk/proms.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.4	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music
0:27.0	when it's out of ice cream.
0:28.9	Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. Robert Frost is the quintessential American poet.
0:49.2	The United States Senate once passed a resolution, naming him as America's great poet philosopher. President Kennedy
0:56.8	booked him for his inauguration. An American culture still holds him close. The vampires in
1:03.8	twilight quote him. The American series Oranges the New Black, contained a whole scene in which
1:10.4	there's an argument about the meaning
1:12.3	of one of his poems. So it may be something of a surprise to learn that some of his greatest work
1:18.0	was written in Beaconsfield, that he was published in Britain before he was published in the
1:23.4	States. His second collection, north of Boston, was brought out by Nut of London a century ago
1:30.0	this spring. That the rural world his poetry inhabits was conjured in old England, rather than
1:36.1	New England, and that we owe the work of an important British poet to him, too, that of Edward
1:42.0	Thomas. Thomas was killed in the First World War that in
1:45.8	obscure way may have been the fault of Robert Frost, but so is the fact that Thomas ever wrote
1:51.5	poetry at all. So tonight will untangle their stories with the help of two authors who know them
1:57.5	well, Frost's biographer Jay Perini and Thomas's biographer Matthew Hollis.
2:10.1	Jay, let's start by bringing Frost to Buckinghamshire. Why was he there?
2:15.0	Well, his wife said that she wanted to live under Thatch, and Frost said, well, why don't we then go to the home of the English lyric?
2:23.1	Frost had been languishing for a very long time.
2:26.5	Remember, he wasn't published until the age of nearly 40.
2:29.3	So for 20 years, he'd been working in New Hampshire as a chicken farmer. He'd written a few poems. They were
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