A Boy's Will - Early Frost

I'm usually reading a couple of books at the same time. Along with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (finished yesterday), I've been reading (for spiritual growth) In The School of the Holy Spirit by Jacques Philippe, and Robert Frost's first book of poetry A Boy's Will - which I just finished this morning.

I am a fan of Frost - he and Dickinson are my two favorite American poets - but I had read a number of his poems in isolation, and not a full book by him. I decided to start with his first book, which is entirely made up of poems with which I was not familiar.

Despite the title, the book was published when Frost was about 39. The poems, though, seem like a young man's poetry - and when I checked I found out that indeed some of the poems had been written 20 years earlier when he was a young man, and many dealt with an earlier period in his life. Some of the poems sound more Victorian or Edwardian, with language that is more traditional than the colloquial diction of his better known poems. It was strange seeing all the "thee's" and "thine's" in a Frost poem.

I enjoyed the book.Some of the poems stood out: "My November Guest," "Mowing," "Reluctance" "The Trial by Existence," "Into My Own," "A Late Walk," Revelation," and "Reluctance" come to mind.

It was as if he was warming up his voice for what would come later. 

Pax et bonum