805 Robert Frost Finds a Friend [Revisited]

About this episode

This episode revisits the story of Robert Frost's friendship with Edward Thomas and the impact it had on their poetry.

In preparation for next week's conversation with Adam Plunkett, author of a new major biography of Robert Frost (1874-1963), we revisit an earlier episode about the widely anthologized (and often misunderstood) New England poet. In this episode, which first aired in 2017 as Episode 93, Jacke dives into a curious but compelling story from the years just before World War I, when a struggling Frost hastily packed up his family and moved to London in search of a friend. Although Frost’s efforts to ingratiate himself with W.B. Yeats and Ezra Pound fizzled, he soon found a man, critic Edward Thomas (1878-1917), who championed Frost’s poetry and became one of Frost’s best friends. Frost in turn inspired Thomas to write his own poetry – until something happened on one of their walks in the woods that would forever change them both. Professor Bill Hogan of Providence College joins Jacke to recount the full story of Frost and Thomas: their friendship, their falling out, and how one of Frost’s (and America’s) most famous poems, “The Road Not Taken,” inspired by Frost’s views of Thomas, has been widely misunderstood by generations of readers. The music in this episode is by Gabriel…

People in this episode

Host: Jacke Wilson

Guests: Adam Plunkett, Bill Hogan

Topics covered

• Robert Frost
• Edward Thomas
• poetry
• friendship
• literary history
• biography

Keywords

• Robert Frost
• Edward Thomas
• poetry
• W.B. Yeats
• Ezra Pound
• The Road Not Taken
• literary friendship
• biography

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Lit Hub Radio, The Podglomerate Network

Books & works: The Road Not Taken

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