The Professorial Poet

His students saw beyond the persona.

1892

Dartmouth freshman Robert Frost abandons his studies just two and a half months after matriculating. We go to college, he says, "to be given one more chance to learn to read in case we haven't learned in High School. Once we have learned to read, the rest can be trusted to add itself unto us."

1911

While teaching in Plymouth, New Hampshire, Frost inspires students to read Rousseau or Plato. Other times he merely reads aloud for days from AConnecticut Yankee in KingArthur's Court.

1926

Frost writes to Dartmouth Professor Sidney Cox, "Don't count on me to do anything for Dartmouth....I suppose it flattered me to be called back to meddle in a system I spurned as a pupil. And that's why I yielded to the temptation."

1943

Frost formally returns to Dartmouth as a Ticknor Fellow in the Humanities. Visitors to his office in Baker Library are frequently kept waiting. (And that's if he's inside.) Often he doesn't show up at all.

1946

Fifteen students gather for Frost's first fall seminar. He offers them this advice: "Whatever you write for me make it snappy."

1955

The Dartmouth headlines a story about an upcoming Frost lecture, "Robert Frost Here to Speak on Paine Or Something Else." Explains Professor Robin Robinson '24, chair of the Great Issues course, "I remember last year after I had introduced the subject, he got up and said: 'Now that we've heard the title, I can talk on what I want to.'"

1962

An interviewer for The Dartmouth asks Frost his opinion on the"new" criticism. Frost isn't ambiguous. "I hate the goddam stuff."

1999

The Class of 1949 Reunion Book contains this description of Frost in the classroom. "Usually affable and relaxed, on one occasion Frost displayed a short temper unremarked upon until much later biographies. A student's seeing-eye dog let out a yelp while Frost was reading aloud. To our dismay he reacted most intemperately. The scene soon setded down, but not before several young men had learned to look beyond the public persona."

As part of a public relations campaign, Standard Oil commissioned this iconic photo of Robert Frost holding court in theTreasure Room.