Peter J. Stanlis (ed). Robert Frost: The Poet as Philosopher.

Excerpt

Peter Stanlis, who recently celebrated his 89th birthday, had devoted much of his scholarly life to his mentor Robert Frost, even before having finished this hefty book (a look at his extensive bibliography would easily confirm this fact). His friendship with Frost began in 1939 when Professor Stanlis was attending Middlebury College, where he first met the renowned poet and essayist who would later become the subject of his scholarship. Frost had a cabin nearby and participated each summer in the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the oldest writers’ workshop in the US, which takes place just east of Middlebury and is sponsored by the college. Frost developed a strong interest in the young Stanlis, who showed poetic promise together with a boundless enthusiasm for eighteenth-century English literature. The scion of a Lithuanian working-class family from Nutley, NJ, USA with exceedingly limited means, Frost’s acolyte waited tables and found other part-time work in order to attend Frost’s summer classes. …