Includes the entirety of Frost's North of Boston (1914); selections from A boy's will (1913); generous selections from Mountain Interval (1916) and New Hampshire (1923); and a selection of lyrics in the section titled Later poems, from West-running brook (1928), A further range (1936), A witness tree (1942), and Steeple bush (1947)

North of Boston (1914) -- The pasture -- Mending wall -- The death of the hired man -- The mountain -- A hundred collars -- Home burial -- The black cottage -- Blueberries -- A servant to servants -- After apple-picking -- The code -- The generations of men -- The housekeeper -- The fear -- The self-seeker -- The wood-pile -- Good hours

Tracing this story, Tim Kendall presents a judicious selection of sixty five poems from across Frost's writing career, beginning in the 1890s and ending with "Directive" from the 1940s. Encouraging readers to follow the journey which Frost himself recognized in all great poetry ("It begins in delight and ends in wisdom"), Kendall intersperses the poems with sensitive and elegant close readings. He reawakens readers to the complexity and strangeness of the poet's canonical works and draws attention to lesser-known but equally powerful poems from across his oeuvre

A boy's will (1913) -- Into my own -- Ghost house -- Rose pogonias -- Mowing -- The trial by existence -- The tuft of flowers -- Reluctance

Robert Frost set out with the ambition "to be a poet for all sorts and kinds." The story of how he succeeded in his ambition is dramatized in the poems themselves

Mountain interval (1916) -- The road not taken -- Christmas trees -- An old man's winter night -- In the home stretch -- Meeting and passing -- Hyla Brook -- The oven bird -- Birches -- Putting in the seed -- The cow in apple time -- An encounter -- The bonfire -- "Out, out---" -- The gum-gatherer -- The vanishing red -- The sound of the trees

The first book on Frost to combine selected poems with a critical study, this engaging, carefully considered, and accessible volume will remind readers why Frost remains one of the most popular and critically respected poets of the past century

New Hampshire (1923) -- A star in a stone-boat -- Maple -- The axe-helve -- The grindstone -- Paul's wife -- Place for a third -- Two witches. I. The witch of Coös -- II. The pauper witch of Grafton -- Fire and ice -- To E.T. -- Stopping by woods on a snowy evening -- For once, then, something -- The onset -- A hillside thaw -- The need of being versed in country things

Later poems -- Acquainted with the night -- Two tramps in mud time -- Desert places -- Neither out far nor in deep -- Design -- The silken tent -- The most of it -- The subverted flower -- The gift outright -- Directive