Love and Need
The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry
by Adam Plunkett
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Pub Date Feb 18 2025 | Archive Date Mar 18 2025
Description
Braiding together biography and criticism, Adam Plunkett challenges our understanding of Robert Frost’s life and poetic legacy in a pathbreaking new work.
By the middle of the twentieth century, Robert Frost was the best-loved poet in America. He was our nation’s bard, simple and sincere, accompanying us on wooded roads and articulating our hopes and fears. After Frost’s death, these cliches gave way to equally broad (though opposed) portraits sketched by his biographers, chief among them Lawrance Thompson. When the critic Helen Vender reviewed Thompson’s biography, she asked whether anyone could avoid the conclusion that Frost was a “monster.”
In Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry, Adam Plunkett blends biography and criticism to find the truth of Frost’s life—one that lies between the two poles of perception. Plunkett reveals a new Frost through a careful look at the poems and people he knew best, showing how the stories of his most important relationships,
heretofore partly told, mirror dominant themes of Frost’s enduring poetry: withholding and disclosure, privacy and intimacy. Not least of these relationships is the fraught, intense friendship between Frost and Thompson, the major biographer whose record of Frost Plunkett seeks to set straight.
Moving through Frost’s most important work and closest relationships with the attention to detail necessary to see familiar things anew, Plunkett offers an original interpretation of Frost’s poetry, tracing Frost’s distinctive achievement to an engagement with poetic tradition far deeper and more extensive than he ever let on. Frost invited his readers into a conversation like the one he sustained with his literary forebears, intimate and profound, yet Frost kept his private self at a remove. Here, Plunkett brings the two together—the poet and the poetry—and draws us back into conversation with America’s poet.
A Note From the Publisher
Advance Praise
“This is a book I have needed for years, without knowing how much I did. Love and Need, precisely titled, tells the story of great art attained in the course of ordinary human foibles and affections, varieties of decency and rage, in a particular American life. Adam Plunkett’s patient, high-grade attention to Robert Frost’s life and work cleans away the encrusted stupidities of fame.” —Robert Pinsky, former United States Poet Laureate and author of Proverbs of Limbo
“This is an exemplary literary biography—concise, elegantly written, and appropriately focused on the life as a means for understanding the work. I wouldn’t have thought I had much to discover about Robert Frost at this point, but Adam Plunkett’s book has been a revelation to me.” —Christian Wiman, author of Zero at the Bone
Available Editions
EDITION | Other Format |
ISBN | 9780374282080 |
PRICE | $35.00 (USD) |
PAGES | 512 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
The first time I encountered Robert Frost was when I read "The Road Not Taken" in my high school textbook. Since then, I have been a devoted admirer of his work. Although I always wanted to read his biography, I never found the time, and I was concerned that reading about a writer's life might be dull compared to enjoying his poetry. However, this book is a dream come true! For the first time, I have come across such a meticulously drawn perspective on a poet and his craft.
Adam Plunkett has masterfully depicted Frost's narrative, capturing the events that influenced him to create such thought-provoking poems. The author made a commendable effort in his research, ensuring he gathered information from a wide array of sources, resulting in a well-rounded view. It seems he incorporated perspectives from all those who contributed to Robert Frost's development, knitting a narrative that reflects everyone's insights. The author is neither biased in his criticism nor overly generous in his praise of Frost's literary achievements.
Plunkett has employed articulate language and carefully crafted his writing style to resonate with Frost's poetry, making the reader feel a deep connection while reading both. Two of my favorite poems were included, and the accompanying analysis was beautifully done.
I couldn't find any grammatical errors or awkward sentences. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and I greatly admire the author's dedication to its creation. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in gaining insights into America's most beloved poet and to those who appreciate Robert Frost's poetry.
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