With more than 650 articles or books about his poetry, Robert Frost may be one of the best known, most studied American poets in our history; despite all that, he may also be one of our least understood. Tim Kendall, British poet, editor and professor, has married criticism to anthology with his new addition to the Frost critical canon. The result is a useful collection of a significant portion of Frost's work with short critiques following each poem.
Kendall not only brings his own close reading to the poems, but also quotes generously from other critics and biographers to provide context and even opposing opinions. Kendall sprinkles many fresh insights among the familiar poems. For example, in the much-anthologized "Birches," Kendall notes, "Frost's fully realized account of the boy's swinging is produced 'with the same pains you use to fill a cup / Up to the brim, and even above the brim.' That moment of fine excess describes the boy's careful climbing, but it also serves as Frost's own modus operandi in a poem which celebrates a sense of liberation via poise and endeavor."
While he occasionally slips into professor-speak, for the most part Kendall speaks with a common tongue that Frost would have appreciated. As Frost said about his poem "The Cow in Apple Time," it is really just "about a cow that runs amok in an orchard." With a poet as complex and deceptively simple as Frost, it is always worthwhile to have a fresh set of eyes and ears take a new look. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.