March 26 - Robert Frost

Poet Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874, but grew up in the mill town of Lawrence, Massachusetts, north of Boston. He briefly attended Dartmouth College and later dropped out of Harvard. He unsuccessfully ran a farm in New Hampshire while writing poetry in the early mornings. His first two books of poetry were published while he lived in London before World War I. He returned to America as a writer, teacher and lecturer associated with Amherst College and Middlebury College, emphasizing to students the importance of colloquial, spoken English in their writing. Often viewed as a rural poet of simple things, Frost in fact addressed many of the darkest, most complex and troublesome issues in human life, in poems such as "Provide, Provide," "Acquainted with the Night," "Mending Wall," "To Earthward," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Design" and "Desert Places." He won four Pulitzer Prizes in poetry.