do you think robert frost got a handle on the understanding of life?

Question

i read an old interview. i was blown away about how insightful this poet was. this is not spam. its just an interesting story.
http://www.frostfriends.org/cookpage.html

Answer 1

No, he had a handle on the experience.

Answer 2

I think he understood life as process of which he was both a pilot and a passenger. I especially enjoyed this passage.

Questions I had in my mind to ask him, I popped. Was poetry his first and only devotion? When did the idea of poetry as a vocation first occur to him? He turned these over in his mind during the rest of the walk but he spoke up. No, writing poetry wasn't a matter of any forced or imperative choice. He hadn't taken a stand to die or fall by poetry. As a young man he had simply turned from one thing to another. There was nothing heroic in his attitude. It was catch-as-catch-can, take your chances, try this and try that; no act of devotion and no Bohemia a la Rimbaud. He turned from professions or occupations before they swallowed him up. When he started to write he remembered his grandfather, William Prescott Frost, saying: " 'I give you a year' (that is, to see the light and quit the poetry nonsense and turn to something else), and I said (Mr. Frost said this vigorously), 'Give me twenty'."


As for his attitude toward life - it isn't the attitude of a world I never made. "No, it isn't. I say: here it is. I make my place in life; I am part of it. I take it as it is. I try to make little bits of clarity in it as I see them!" He quoted approvingly Gray's "And be with caution bold." He added: "Life's good-bad, light-shadow, bitter-sweet, but it's fifty and one-third good and forty-nine and two-thirds bad." The margin is that fine. Then I remarked on the fact that his success was in part attributable to imagination. "Yes," he said, "and in making turns of phrase. Memory, too." "I learned," he told me, "that it was better to read not a thousand books but one book a thousand times. That's why I remember so well."

Thanks so much for brightening a morning!

Answer 3

You have a couple of very insightful answers, but I'd add one more...He had a handle on "his" life, without understanding any of life's mysteries, he understood his place in the world and was satisfied with how he was living it. He didn't have a fatalistic view of life, but he understood those things he had to accept as beyond his control. His poetry reflects his reflections on life, as well as his perceptions of human nature. Many people mistake his poetry as self-absorbtion, but it wasn't, it was his way of seeing how the world sees itself...through his eyes, knowing that it would forever be seeing through a glass darkly.

Answer 4

Maybe better than most, but I think he had an even better handle on and acceptance of himself.
As for his attitude toward life - it isn't the attitude of a world I never made. "No, it isn't. I say: here it is. I make my place in life; I am part of it. I take it as it is. I try to make little bits of clarity in it as I see them!" He quoted approvingly Gray's "And be with caution bold." He added: "Life's good-bad, light-shadow, bitter-sweet, but it's fifty and one-third good and forty-nine and two-thirds bad." The margin is that fine. Then I remarked on the fact that his success was in part attributable to imagination. "Yes," he said, "and in making turns of phrase. Memory, too." "I learned," he told me, "that it was better to read not a thousand books but one book a thousand times. That's why I remember so well."

Answer 5

Thank you for the article. I was glad to read it.