#000639
Robert Frost: The Aim Was Song
Jean Gould
Jean Gould's Robert Frost: The Aim Was Song is a warm, readable life of the poet, published in 1964, a year after Frost's death. Gould, a prolific biographer of poets and writers, walks through the essential arc: the hardscrabble early years, the New Hampshire farm, the pivotal move to England that launched his career, the Pulitzers, the public triumphs, and the private griefs of a life shadowed by family loss. Written for general readers rather than scholars, it takes its title from Frost's own lines and adopts a correspondingly appreciative tone. It suits readers who want an accessible introduction to Frost's life and work, and it has a particular historical interest as a portrait composed before Lawrance Thompson's later, far harsher biography reshaped, and for many years darkened, Frost's public image.
more…less ▴
The author
Jean Gould (1909-1993) was an American author who specialized in accessible biographies of poets and writers, including Amy Lowell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and the Modernist poets. She wrote for a broad readership, favoring narrative sympathy over critical dissection.
The book
Robert Frost: The Aim Was Song (Dodd, Mead, 1964) is a straightforward cradle-to-grave life, taking its title from Frost's poem "The Aim Was Song." It covers the hard early years, the making of the poet in England, the long ascent to fame, and the personal tragedies of his family, in a genial, admiring key.
How it reads
As an introduction it is clear and humane, and it remains a pleasant entry point. Its significance is also chronological: it was written before Frost's designated biographer Lawrance Thompson published the three volumes (1966-1976) that recast him as a monster of egotism and spite, a "pathography," in Joyce Carol Oates's term, whose fairness later biographers including Jay Parini have strongly disputed. Gould's book thus preserves the pre-Thompson, sympathetic Frost. Read today, it is best paired with a modern biography that weighs the darker evidence and the backlash against Thompson's portrait, so the reader gets both the man and the argument about him.
For more context
Compare with Lawrance Thompson's authorized volumes and, as a corrective, Jay Parini's Robert Frost: A Life.
Sources - Biblio: Robert Frost: The Aim Was Song - Commentary: Robert Frost: The Later Years
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Jean Gould
- Publisher
- Dodd, Mead
- Place of publication
- New York
- Year
- 1964
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Biography & Memoir
- Location
- Colorado