Robert Frost

John F. Kennedy invited Frost to participate in the January 20, 1961 inauguration. Frost had prepared a new poem, but glare made it difficult to read, so he recited the older poem The Gift Outright from memory.

Frost won four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry, a rare record for an American poet. The winning books were New Hampshire, Collected Poems, A Further Range, and A Witness Tree.

Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874, but his mature poetic identity was shaped by New Hampshire, Vermont, farms, stone walls, and rural speech. Poems like "Mending Wall" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" made that New England setting central to his reputation.

Frost often uses plain speech, rural scenes, and tight forms, but the poems frequently turn toward isolation, death, choice, or social unease. "The Road Not Taken," first published in 1915, is a good example because its familiar surface hides a more complicated meditation on memory and decision.