Homage to Robert Frost [Hardcover]

Joseph Brodsky (Author), Seamus Heaney (Author), Derek Walcott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1996

In a collection of essays, three of our generation's greatest poets explore the mythologies and misconceptions that surround one of this country's most idolized poets.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott, Nobel laureates all, have written perceptive, affectionate, admiring essays on Robert Frost. Eschewing both of the prevailing caricatures of Frost (the irascible but beloved cracker-barrel philosopher and the shallow megalomaniac), these writers pay careful attention to the poems themselves. They open doors into the world of words that Frost constructed, and help readers understand the music and the ideas in those worlds. Derek Walcott's dark reading of Frost's much-quoted classic, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," is alone worth the price of Homage to Robert Frost. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

While in life Frost (1874-1963) took on the persona of a gentlemen farmer, he emerges from these essays as a far darker and more complex figure. And certainly no poet could ask for better critics than these three Nobel laureates. The late Joseph Brodsky offers a masterful close reading of two of Frost's poems, the lyric "Come In" and the narrative "Home Burial." Seamus Heaney's piece, though slightly less focused, is filled with insights and reads like poetry itself. Derek Walcott's essay, the most broadly focused, argues that Frost's straightforward colloquial voice was as important an innovation for American verse as the more ostentatious experiments of Williams and Cummings. He sees in Frost the heir of both Whitman and Dickinson. Each of these essays was originally published in magazines?Brodsky in the New Yorker, Heaney in Salmagundi and Walcott in the New Republic?and this book would doubtlessly have been even stronger if it had been created by design rather than happenstance. But these pieces are criticism as an art form, and a superb invitation to explore the work of a great American poet.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 117 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T); First Edition edition (September 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374172463
• ISBN-13: 978-0374172466
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,495,362 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brodsky's explanation of Frost's work is the best I've seen, April 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Homage to Robert Frost (Hardcover)

If you need to read one critical examination of Robert Frost, buy this & read Joseph Brodsky's fantastic, accessible take on "Home Burial". What a great book this is--three fine poets examining a brilliant poet. But it is Brodsky who best holds to the Frost credo--he speaks clearly and plainly.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a wonderful companion to hearing Frost's seemingly off handed reading of his material, October 3, 2006

By 

Pip "ppsm1" (Abbotsford, British Columbia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Homage to Robert Frost (Paperback)

This is a marvelous little book to be savoured at every chance and to be re-read as well. Its instructive for both the reader of poetry and the writer of poetry and every student of poetry should read this little masterpiece.It contains many insights and adds a much needed depth to the Frost that many may suspect is not there. Brodsky's erudite rendering of Frost as a student of Virgil makes me want to run back to Virgil and read other works by him besides the Aeneid and go to The Eclogues, also called Bucolics.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A glimpse into how poets read poets, March 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Homage to Robert Frost (Paperback)

Brodsky, Heaney, and Walcott helped me hear the music of Frost's poetry. They don't analyze all that many poems but the insights they offer open the door to others. For example, I learned about Frost's idea of "Sentence-Sounds" in Brodsky's review of "Home Burial" and his idea of the "Sounds of Sense" in Heaney's discussion of "Desert Places". Then when I read Frost's "To a Thinker", which does not appear in "Homage to Frost", I came across the line "...From sound to sense and back to sound", and of course I recognized a familiar theme. If you like Frost, this book makes a nice companion reader.