January 29, 1963
Robert Frost Dies
Regions:
Northeast
Western
On this day in 1963, Robert Frost died, the most popular and renowned American poet of the twentieth century. But his success was a long time in coming. It was as a student at Lawrence High School that he discovered he had a gift and a passion for poetry. His first published poem appeared in the school newspaper in 1890. It was another four years before he sold his first — entirely forgettable — poem to a New York newspaper. Almost two decades of failure followed. Only after a three-year stay in England, did Frost finally find his poetic voice and become the man who won four Pulitzer Prizes and received so many honorary degrees that he had his academic hoods made into a quilt.