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In the Clearing
Robert Frost
Published on Robert Frost's 88th birthday in March 1962, ten months before his death, In the Clearing was the last collection of poetry he saw into print. It gathers late work, including the well-known "Away!" and the long philosophical poems "Kitty Hawk" and the biblical dialogue "A Masque of Reason" companion pieces, in the plainspoken, deceptively casual New England voice that made Frost the most beloved American poet of his century. The poems circle his lifelong subjects: nature, work, mortality, faith and doubt, and the human place in a resistant world. As a valedictory volume it is uneven but affecting, the sound of a very old poet still testing his instrument. It speaks to readers who love Frost's earlier books and want to hear where his voice arrived at the end.
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The author
Robert Frost (1874-1963) was, by the end of his life, a national institution: four Pulitzer Prizes, a reading at John F. Kennedy's 1961 inauguration, and a public image as the wise, genial farmer-poet of New England. Beneath the homespun surface lay a darker, more skeptical sensibility that the best criticism has always recognized.
The book
In the Clearing (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962) appeared on his 88th birthday and was an immediate bestseller. It collects his late poems, among them "Away!," "Kitty Hawk," and shorter lyrics, and stands as the capstone of a career that began with A Boy's Will half a century earlier.
How it has aged
Critics generally rank it below Frost's great middle-period books; some late poems feel discursive or slack. Its interest is partly valedictory. It is also worth knowing that Frost's personal reputation was savaged after his death by his authorized biographer Lawrance Thompson, whose 1966-1976 volumes painted him as vain, cruel, and vindictive, an account later scholars such as Jay Parini judged grossly unfair and colored by Thompson's own resentment. The poems endure regardless of the biographical wars; read them for the voice, not the verdict on the man.
For more context
Start with North of Boston and New Hampshire for Frost at his peak, and Parini's Robert Frost: A Life for a fairer portrait.
Sources - In the Clearing (Wikipedia) - The Washington Post: The Dark Side of Frost
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Robert Frost
- Publisher
- Holt, Rinehart and Winston
- Place of publication
- New York
- Year
- 1962
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Poetry
- Location
- Colorado