An introduction for AQA LitB1 ROBERT FROST jonathan Peel UCGS 2013 An introduction for AQA LitB1

The poet: March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963 As with the British writer Thomas Hardy, longevity means a colossal range of influences and perspectives. Consider what these might be. jonathan Peel UCGS 2013

Life Born in San Francisco Attended Harvard University Lived briefly in Beaconsfield Settled in New England/New Hampshire where much of his poetry is set. Moved to teach at a range of American Universities but never lost the pull of the N.E. USA in his writings. jonathan Peel UCGS 2013

What do these images say to you? jonathan Peel UCGS 2013

In his own words: I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering. In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on. A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing. Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct. jonathan Peel UCGS 2013

The poems. The Wood Pile The Road Not Taken Out, Out The Ax Helve Stopping by Woods An Unstamped Letter The Draft Horse A Considerable Speck After Apple-Picking You will receive an anthology containing the poems. Have a look and read them – aloud. Make a note of your first responses and bring it to the first lesson. Look again at the Frost quotation page and see if you respond differently. jonathan Peel UCGS 2013