Robert Frost, a biography by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Frost, Robert, 1874-1963, Poets, American
Publisher: New York : Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Published: 1982-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Although it would have been difficult for any poet to follow Amy Lowell, the next one scheduled was the best showman in this higher-vaudeville business: Vachel Lindsay. Naive and childlike in his ability to lose himself in the spirit of such poems as his "General William Booth Enters into Heaven" or "The Congo," he acted out and chanted them. Awkward in his long-armed, long-legged struttings about the stage, he never seemed to guess that anyone might find an element of clowning in his performance.

President Burton, addressing an alumni dinner in Louisville, Kentucky, said (before the poet series was over) he was uncertain whether the most popular man on the Michigan campus was Coach Yost or Robert Frost. When asked to comment, Frost said he was willing to demonstrate which man had the stronger drawing power. He would wait until the next football game and would schedule for that same Saturday afternoon a Robert Frost reading in the Hill Auditorium. On that afternoon the stadium, he declared, would be filled and nobody would be in the Hill Auditorium—"not even myself, because I'll be at the football game."

President Burton's remark was taken more seriously by an undergraduate who wrote an editorial on it for The Michigan Daily:

". . . Of course, the President made this remark more or less in a spirit of fun, but nevertheless it did drive home with particular effectiveness the realization of the University's progress during the present year towards the general appreciation of things cultural.

"The interest in literature and in any pursuit which deals with the arts has become widespread, and perhaps the best example of this is the enthusiastic attendance at the Poets' Lecture series, [requiring] . . . Hill auditorium in order to accommodate the crowds.

"President Burton attributes the cultural spurt largely if not entirely to the stimulating influence of Robert Frost in our midst, and few can deny that the fellowship made possible through the generosity of Chase S. Osborn has produced excellent results. ..."

Frost was able to measure the success of his performance at Michigan in another way. As the end of the spring term approached he confided to one of his friends, "Terrible pressure being put on me to bring me back to Ann Arbor." Although he kept speaking of himself as being merely a part of "President Burton's window-dressing," he enjoyed the attentions showered on him during the year. He also liked sitting on the platform during the commencement exercises and, with Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes and others, receiving an honorary degree. Although he grumbled pleasantly over the fact that he was asked to settle for a mere M.A., he found no fault with the citation: "Robert Frost, M.A., poet and teacher; trained at Dartmouth and Harvard; yet more truly a fashioner of his own education through sympathetic and penetrating

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