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Article: Frost in a Clear Lens.(Review)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- May 3, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Robert Frost: A Life, by Jay Parini (Holt, 528 pp., $35)
As we end the 20th century a rough consensus has emerged. The preeminent poets writing in English have been Yeats, Eliot, and Frost. A bit lower many would place Stevens, Pound, and maybe Auden. I note that Americans score well; also that, taken as a whole, this has been a glorious century for poetry in English, perhaps the best since the 17th.
Parini's fine new biography of Frost enters a strange situation. We have the three-volume biography (1966-76) of Lawrance Thompson and R. H. Winnick. That project had a grotesque aspect. Thompson, a competent scholar, was chosen as biographer by Frost ...