In the Virginia Quarterly Review Dana Gioia has written a beautifully crafted essay on narrative voice in Robert Frost’s poetry. Mr. Gioia’s argument in the essay is that Frost’s narrative poems are where his version of modernism is most clearly demonstrated, and in making this case Mr. Gioia provides in particular an excellent reading of North of Boston and New Hampshire. It’s a wonderful study of Frost, who is a poet with whom the SLU Libraries have a very direct connection. One of our great rare book collections is the Frank P. Piskor Collection of Robert Frost, a collection that embodies Dr. Piskor’s great admiration for Frost. Within this collection and within our circulating collection we have a number of editions of North of Boston: 1915 Holt, a 1919 Holt illustrated by James Chapin, a 1914 D. Nutt (London), 1977 Mead, and a check-outable Poems by Robert Frost : A Boy’s Will and North of Boston 1989 Penguin Canada. We have a number of circulating Collected Poems of Robert Frost, 1939, 1942, 1995 (Library of America edition), and a 2012 collection of Frost poems–The Art of Robert Frost–edited by Tim Kendall.
Dana Gioia is a fine writer, and we have a number of his books including: Can Poetry matter? Essays on Poetry and Culture, Daily Horoscope : Poems, Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of Print Culture, Interrogations at Noon: Poems, and Pity the Beautiful: Poems.