The Letters of Robert Frost, Vol. 2: 1920–1928

For all its bulk, comprehensiveness, and thorough scholarly apparatus, this collection of letters, second in a five-volume series, yields relatively slender insight into the technique behind Frost’s enduringly beloved poems. Equally sparse on engagement with current events, the letters instead brim with Frost’s affections for and rivalries with the literary lions of his day, a deep ambivalence toward the colleges where he earned most of his income, and an ongoing interest in poetry as an ideal and a practice. The bulk of the subject matter is mundane: polite responses to fan mail, much haggling over living situations and fees for speaking engagements, encouragement of protégés, and negotiations with his publishers, all delivered in an accomplished, subtle prose style thick with allusion, intelligence, and humor. With his closest friends, Frost is most revealing: philosophical, broad-minded, and wry, self-deprecating and ambitious, anxious about his family, and longing to withdraw from his exhausting public life to be a simple poet-farmer. A temperamental streak beneath the cultivated persona of the humble, mild-mannered raconteur keeps things lively for the reader. This second installment in an impressive project tracks the transformation of the hardworking craftsman into a monument of American letters. (Sept.)