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

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 ...

Reading Frost requires a kind of modesty and curiosity. Coming to this modesty has been a big part of my own experience with him. At first, I was reading a lot of the poems and thinking, This is dumb.

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,’” ...

A fond memory of the poet.

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) ...