When Roads Diverge: Robert Frost and Belief in the Future

Robert Frost is perhaps the most beloved poet in the history of American Literature. Deceptively simple and accessible, Frost’s poems have beguiled a wide range of admiring readers since he suddenly, and unpredictably, emerged on the poetry scene over a century ago. His familiar New England landscapes, cracker-barrel wisdom, and uncanny ability to capture American idioms in brilliant dramatic dialogues have endeared him to audiences around the world, making him this country’s first international poetic celebrity. A closer look at Frost’s poetry, however, reveals a far more complex and brooding poet than most readers have recognized. His preoccupation with our diminished place in the natural world, his ruminations over the relationship between the individual and society, and his fear that science might one day make poetry and religion obsolete distinguish Robert Frost as an exemplar of modernism. Though a child of the nineteenth century, Frost’s inquisitive mind and forward-looking speculation make him surprisingly contemporary and relevant to our troubled and often chaotic world.

A distinguished panel of Robert Frost scholars will gather to discuss among themselves, and with the audience, Frost’s enduring contribution to American letters and how his insights have not only captured the American character but also predict the future of American poetry. Panelists include Lesley Lee Francis, Robert Frost’s granddaughter and author of Robert Frost: An Adventure in Poetry, 1900-1918 and You Come Too: My Journey with Robert Frost; David Orr, Professor of the Practice at Cornell University, poetry critic for the New York Times, and author of Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry  and The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong; Donald Sheehy, Professor of English at Edinboro University, author of numerous groundbreaking scholarly articles on Robert Frost, and lead editor of The Letters of Robert Frost; and Robert Bernard Hass (moderator), Professor of English at Edinboro University, co-editor (with Donald Sheehy, Mark Richardson, and Henry Atmore) of The Letters of Robert Frost, and author of Going by Contraries: Robert Frost’s Conflict with Science.