Nevertheless, for this poem, and for the first time in his career, Frost got paid—$15, by the editor of a New York weekly called The Independent. “On reading ‘My Butterfly,’ ” Adam Plunkett writes in ...

Sometimes seen as the stuff of commencement addresses, his poems are hard to pin down—just like the man behind them.

There are no revelations in Love and Need, but Plunkett excels at bringing the poems to life with contextual details (such as the ones above) and literary resonances. Robert Frost in 1962.

Sometimes things live up to their name. Take Robert Frost. The four-time-Pulitzer-winning poet is known for his wintry poem "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening." (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING ...

The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash’ by Alexander Clapp “There is a reason why Mafia bosses tend to work in ‘waste management,’” ...

Up they float into bad-poem limbo, where their bad lines, loose and weedlike, drift and coil and tangle with one another eternally. Robert Frost, who turned 20 in 1894, uncertain of his gift ...