Sunday, April 20, 2008

"I know the prose I have written has made good competition for my verse," Robert Frost told one of his sons in 1933, but he famously rejected all efforts to collect and publish his prose. He even seems to have purposely "lost" the only transcript of his Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, which he delivered at Harvard in 1936. Now, 45 years after the poet's death, Mark Richardson, a professor of English, has given us the fullest critical edition of Frost's prose ever published, including everything "Frost is known to have prepared for print, major and minor items alike." Beginning with pieces he wrote while in high school, The Collected Prose of Robert Frost (Belknap, 375 pp., $39.95) presents his stories, speeches, talks and essays. Examples of his wit and insight abound: "Education in English is properly a slow process of just staying around in the right company till you can speak of and handle a book in the author's presence without setting his teeth on edge."

-- Ron Charles