heres English Term 1 Project

1. 1. Robert Frost(A Roadside Stand)
Who was Robert Frost?
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet best known for his vivid poems
describing rural life in England. He had an admirable command of
colloquial speech and wrote descriptive poems about ordinary people
going about their lives with a philosophical undertone. He was a much-
celebratedliteraryfigure with severalawards and honors to his name.He
is the only poetso far to receivefour Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. The
son of a journalist, he started writing poems as a school student. As a
young man, he worked in several jobs but found no satisfaction. He
realizedpoetry was his true callingand became a full-time poet.It did not
take him long to establish himselfsuccessfullyin his literary career.Later
on, he also took up teaching. He was considered a brilliant teacher and
held positions at several prestigious institutions, including Amherst
College and the University of Michigan. As a poet, he was much
appreciated for the honesty in his tone and his skillsat depictingrural life
and the lives of ordinary people in a clear, realistic manner. He received
the Congressional Gold Medal and the Edward MacDowell Medal for his
contribution to the arts.

2. Childhood & Early Life
 Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San
Francisco, California, US, to William Prescott Frost, Jr. and
his wife, Isabelle Moodie. His father, a journalist, was the
descendant of an English immigrant, while his mother was
a Scottish immigrant. Robert had a younger sister, Jeanie.
 His father died of tuberculosis when Robert was 11 years
old. His mother took the two children to Lawrence,
Massachusetts, where they were taken in by Robert’s
paternal grandparents. His mother earned a living by
teaching in different schools in New Hampshire and
Massachusetts.
 Robert was a good student and excelled in his studies. He
also started writing poetry as a schoolboy. He graduated
from high school in 1892 as a top student in his class. He
shared valedictorian honors with Elinor White, a girl he was
in love with.
 He joined Dartmouth College but attended classes for only
a couple of months during which he was accepted into the
Theta Delta Chi fraternity.
Career
 After quitting college, Robert Frost began a teaching
career, helping his mother at work. He also took up a series
of odd jobs like delivering newspapers and working in a
carbon arc lamps factory.
 He wasn’t satisfied with any of the jobs he dabbled in and
realized that poetry was his true calling. His poem My
Butterfly. An Elegy was published in the November 8, 1894,
edition of the New York Independent. He was paid $15 for
it.

3.  From 1897 to 1899, Robert Frost attended Harvard
University but didn’t stay to complete his degree; he had to
quit owing to health issues. His grandfather had purchased
a farm for him and his wife in Derry, New Hampshire. The
couple moved there and Frost worked on the farm for
several years while continuing to write poetry.
 He wasn’t successful at farming. With a growing family to
feed, he returned to the field of education and took up a
position as an English teacher at New Hampshire's
Pinkerton Academy in 1906. He worked there for five years.
 He moved to Great Britain with his family in 1912. His first
book of poetry, A Boy’s Will, was published in 1913 and the
next volume, North of Boston, was out the following year.
 The poems he wrote in England were deeply influenced by
the rural life of ordinary folks. His works also had a
philosophical undertone and talked about the harsh realities
of village life. By 1915, he had managed to become a
popular poet with his poignant literary works.
 Robert Frost returned to America in 1915 when World War
I was going on. He was already a popular poet by then. He
purchased a farm in New Hampshire and built a successful
career composing poetry and teaching. For several years,
he taught English at Amherst College in Massachusetts.
 He gained much fame and success as a poet in the ensuing
years. His best-known books released in the following
decades were New Hampshire (1923), A Further
Range (1936), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the
Clearing (1962). He also served as a consultant in poetry to
the Library of Congress from 1958 to 1959.
 Besides being an exceptional poet, Robert Frost was also
phenomenal as a teacher. For four decades, starting from
the early 1920s, he spent numerous summers and falls

4. teaching at the Bread Loaf School of English of Middlebury
College.
 He took up a fellowship teaching post at the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1921. He stayed there until 1927
and returned to Amherst.
 He owned several properties, including a plot in South
Miami, Florida, and a house on Brewster Street in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Major Works
 Robert Frost’s volume of poetry New Hampshire is counted
amongst his most important works. The book contained
poems, such as Nothing Gold Can Stay, Stopping by
Woods on a Snowy Evening, and Fire and Ice, and won the
1924 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
 His poem collection A Further Range is another one of his
major works that earned a Pulitzer Prize. It was dedicated
to his wife and divided into six parts. It contained poems
including The Gold Hesperidee, In Time of Cloudburst, A
Roadside Stand, and Departmental.
Family & Personal Life
 Robert Frost fell in love with a girl named Elinor Miriam
White while still in school. She was an ambitious young
woman who inspired many of his poems.
 He was determined to marry her even though she didn’t
accept the first time he proposed. She accepted when he
proposed a second time, and they were married on
December 19, 1895.
 The couple had six children, out of who two died very
young. While four of his children lived to adulthood, two of

5. them predeceased their father. Elinor, who Frost loved very
deeply, developed breast cancer and died in 1938.
 Robert Frost lived a long life and died on January 29, 1963,
due to complications from prostate surgery. He was 88.

6. 2. Pablo Neruda(Keeping Quiet)
Who was Pablo Neruda?
Pablo Neruda mayhave evoked a numberofcontroversies throughouthis
lifetime, but he still remains one of the most influential literati of the
modernist20thcentury.Hispoetic flairwaswithoutdoubt,one ofthe finest
of his time, for which he received a number of accolades and honors,
including the NobelPrizeforliterature.ThisChilean poethas been named
one of‘the greatestpoetsofthe 20th century in any language’forhis large
repertoire of works, typically based on surrealistic, erotic or historic
themes.Mostofhis poetry was written in the Spanishlanguage and many
readers from around the world found it difficult to disentangle Neruda’s
poetry from his zealous obligation to socialism. His works that are
available or decoded in English embody only a small percentage of his
over-all yield today. Apart from his writing career, he was placed in a
numberofambassadorialpositionsandalsoserveda briefstintas senator
for the Chilean Communist Party. When communism was proscribed,
Neruda was to be arrested, but he instead went into exile. Today, many
of his works conjure vivid imagery andare capable ofrousing the soul.If
you want to learn more about this debated yet interesting personality,
scroll further.

7. Childhood & Early Life
 Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto (Pablo Neruda) was born in
Parral, Chile. His father worked with the railroad whereas
his mother was a teacher, who died shortly after his birth.
 When he was a teenager, he began writing a number of
poems and articles that were first published in the daily, ‘La
Manana’.
 In 1920, he began writing for the ‘Selva Austral’ under the
pseudonym, Pablo Neruda, a name he derived from the
name of the Czech poet, Jan Neruda.
Career
 In 1923, he sold all of his belongings to back the publication
of his first book, ‘Crepusculario’ (Book of Twilights) under
his penname. He used the alias in order to evade
skirmishes with his family, who objected to making writing
his occupation.
 He also published a collection of love poems that became
controversial for its amatory themes titled, ‘Viente poemas
de amor y una cancion desesperada’ (Twenty Love Poems
and a Song of Despair), in 1924. A second edition was also
published much later. By the age of 20, he had established
himself as a sound poet, but he was facing extreme poverty.
 In 1926, ‘Tentativa del hombre infinito’ (The trying of infinite
man) and ‘Tentativa y su esperanza’ (The inhabitant and
his hope); a collection and a novel, respectively, were
published.
 Out of financial anxiety, he took up honorary consulship in
Rangoon, which was then a part of Burma, and isolated
himself from people where he experimented with different
kinds of poetry.

8.  In 1933, he penned the first of the three volumes of a poetry
collection, ‘Residencia En La Tierra’ (Residence on Earth),
which would later spawn two more volumes.
 After he returned to Chile, he served a number of diplomatic
posts and at the inception of the civil war, he became
extremely involved with politics. In order to show his support
for the Republican side, he voiced his thoughts and his
support in the collection, ‘Espada en el corazon’ (Spain in
the Heart), in 1938.
 After the election in 1938, he was appointed as superior
consul for Spanish immigration in Paris. Here, he was
assigned the task of making sure he sent Spanish refugees
back to Chile in a boat called, ‘Winnipeg’.
 From 1940 to 1943, he was appointed as Consul General
in Mexico City. In 1943, he returned to Chile and visited the
famous Machu Picchu, which inspired an enormous twelve-
part poem titled, ‘Alturas de Macchu Picchu’.
 During World War II, he grew to admire Soviet Union’s
Joseph Stalin, who was responsible in defeating Nazi
Germany. He voiced his admiration for the leader in poems
like ‘Canto a Stalingrado’ and ‘Nuevo canto de amor a
Stalingrado’, written between 1942 and 1943.
 On March 4, 1945, he was elected as senator for the
Communist party for the provinces of Antofagasta and
Tarapaca. The following year, he was made campaign
manager by the Radical Party presidential nominee,
Gabriel Gonzalez Videla, whom he later grew to criticize.
 Fearing capture, he went into hiding and was removed from
his post on September, 1948 and the Communist Party was
banned altogether. His secretive life finally ended the next
year, where he fled from Chile and spent the next three
years in exile, in Buenos Aires.

9.  During this time, he travelled extensively around Europe,
Asia and the Soviet Union. From 1950 to 1952, he authored
the famous ‘Canto General’, which contains over 231
poems and also published ‘Los versos del Capiton’, under
an anonymous name.
 Towards the end of 1952, he got back to Chile and by this
time, was already enjoying the worldwide fame as a poet.
Around fourteen years later, he was invited for the
International PEN conference in New York City.
 In 1970, he was nominated as a candidate for the Chilean
presidency, but he instead let Salvador Allende win the
elections. Shortly after Allende was made president,
Neruda was appointed as the Chilean ambassador to
France.
Major Works
 ‘Viente poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada’
(Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)’, published in
1924 was his second published work and established his
name as a poet. This work, although controversial, came to
be known as one of his greatest works and has been
translated into various languages. The ‘poemas’ has sold
over a million copies around the world and although it was
his early work, it is largely considered his ‘best-known
work’.

10. Awards & Achievements
 In 1953, Neruda was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize.
 In 1971, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for
his literary contributions.
 He was awarded the Golden Wreath Award at the Struga
Poetry Evenings, in 1972.
Personal Life & Legacy
 He married a bank employee, Maryka Antonieta Hagenaar
Vogelzang, while he worked a shift in Java. He later
separated from his wife and started an affair and married a
woman, 20 years his senior called, Delia del Carril.
 A Chilean singer, Matilde Urrutia was hired to care for him
during his exile, and he started having an affair with her..
 After returning to Chile from exile, he got back with his wife,
del Carril, but the marriage began to disintegrate. She
eventually learned of his affair with Urrutia and Neruda went
back to Urrutia, with whom he would live for the rest of his
life.
 He was diagnosed with prostate cancer and he later died of
heart failure in the 1973. Following his death, his
autobiography, ‘I Confess I have Lived’ was published and
Urrutia’s memoir titled, ‘My Life with Pablo Neruda’was
published in the 1980s.
 He has been mentioned in popular culture in films, literature
and music. These include mentions of his name or his
works in movies like ‘Pablo Neruda: The Poet’s Calling’, the
book, ‘El caso Neruda’ or in albums like, ‘The Pretender’
and ‘Neruda Songs’. He also had three houses in Chile, all
of which have been made into public museums.

11. Trivia
 There were suggestions that this famous Chilean writer and
diplomat was killed during the Pinochet Regime, and in
order to get to the truth, orders were given by the Chilean
government, to exhume the remains of this great
personality to carry out lab tests.

12. 3. John Keats(A Thing Of Beauty)
Who was John Keats?
‘Beauty is truth,truth beauty,—thatis allYe know on earth,and all yeneed
to know’is one of the famous lines ofthe sonnet,‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’,
which discreetly depicts the greatness and grandeur of John Keats, one
of the mostinfluential figures ofthe second generation ofRomantic poets.
Such is the contribution of this greatly endowed poet that no discussion
on Romantic English poets can be complete without the mention of him.
Living up to only 25 years ofage.However,back inthe early 19th century,
when Keats was alive, his work was mostly criticized and not well
received.Itwas onlyposthumouslythatKeatscreative outburstsappealed
to people which saw a vertical growth in his reputation. He was said to
possess innate poetic sensibilities which assisted him in bringing forth
sensual imagery to his work, that expressed a philosophy through
classical legend.Overthe years,the works ofKeats haveinfluencedmany
prolific poets and writers of the 19th and the 20th century.

13. Childhood & Early Life
 Born to Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats, John Keats
was the eldest of the five children of the couple, one of
whom died in infancy.
 Baptized at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, Keats attained
much of his primary education from a local dame school.
Since his father worked as a livery stable-keeper,Keats had
a very humble income to fall back upon.
 Unable to afford Eton or Harrow, young Keats’ enrolled
himself at the John Clarke's school in Enfield in 1803.
Though the school was much smaller than and not as
flamboyant as other larger, prestigious schools, it
nevertheless had a liberal outlook and a progressive
curriculum more modern than most others.
 It was during his years at Clarke that Keats was exposed to
classics and history, which he seemed to show a penchant
for and which remained with him till the end of his life.
 Meanwhile, Keats befriended Charles Cowden Clarke, his
headmaster's son, who served as the mentor for him and
introduced Keats to Renaissance literature, including
Tasso, Spenser, and Chapman's translations.
 A voracious reader that he was, Keats started channelizing
his energy on reading and studying instead of giving in to
the indolence and fighting due to his volatile character.
 However, justas Keats educational life was going smoothly,
his personal life faced a crisis as his father died due to skull
fracture sustained by falling from his horse.
 Keats, who was extremely close to his father, was shattered
and heartbroken. The incident had a profound effect on his
life afterward and shaped his understanding of human
condition.

14.  The death of his father led to financial insecurity. His
mother, Frances remarried, leaving her sons under the care
and responsibility of her mother. However, the new alliance
did not work out for her as she returned to her family. Keats
mother left for the heavenly abode in 1810, after suffering
from tuberculosis.
True Calling
 Keats left Clarke’s school and found himself an employment
with Thomas Hammond, a surgeon and apothecary, as an
apprentice. Upon completing his apprenticeship, he
eventually studied medicine at a London hospital.
 Within a month, Keats started assisting surgeons in
operation. He had a distinctive aptitude for medicine which
led everyone, including his family and himself, to believe
that he would became a doctor one fine day. The long
training brought with it greater responsibility and bigger
workload for Keats
 Destiny seemed to have other plans for Keats, who was
uncertain about his career in medicine and seemed to be
more and more fascinated and devoted to literature and
arts. He wrote his first ever poem in 1814, titled ‘An Imitation
to Spenser’, after being inspired from fellow poets, Leigh
Hunt and Lord Byron.
 Unwillingly, Keats continued his studies and eventually
received his apothecary license in 1816, which made him
eligible to practice as an apothecary, physician and
surgeon. However, adhering to the voice of his heart and
following his true calling, he resolved to be a poet and not
a surgeon.

15.  Keats continued his training at Hospital but devoted most of
his time in the study of literature. He started experimenting
with verse forms, particularly that of sonnets.
Start of an Era
 It was in 1816 that Leigh Hunt agreed to publish Keats work,
‘O Solitude’, which was a sonnet, in his magazine, ‘The
Examiner’. This marked Keats entry into the world of
literature as it was the first ever work of Keats to be
published. In the following years, Hunt played an influential
role in the life of Keats and directed the latter’s course of
writing.
 Impressed by the success of his first ever literary work,
Keats was inspired to write. To take forward his ambition
and true calling, Keats started penning ‘Calidore’, while he
was holidaying with Clarke on the seaside town of Margate.
 October 1816 witnessed the publication of the first volume
of Keats's verse, Poems. Though the book met with little
critical success, Keats was unwilling to cede to the failure
and started working on his next volume.
 It was during this time that Keats befriended Woodhouse
who recognized the potential of Keats as a poet and writer.
He advised Keats on legal and literary matters and
remained one of the confidantes of the latter till the end.
 Keats next work was an essay titled, ‘Three Young Poets’
and sonnet ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’.
Published by Hunt, the work opened the doors of the literary
giants for Keats, who was introduced to the who’s who of
the literary world, including Thomas Barnes (Times editor),
Charles Lamb (writer), Vincent Novello (conductor), John
Hamilton Reynolds (poet) and William Hazlitt, a powerful
literary figure.

16.  This can also be marked as the turning point in the life of
Keats who established himself as a key figure in the literary
circles. Keats turned to writing and gave up his medicinal
career completely.
 Leaving hospital, Keats relocated to Hampstead where he
lived next to Hunt and Coleridge. It was during this time that
Keats’ next came up with ‘Endymion’, a four-thousand line
allegorical poem based on the Greek myth of the same
name. Dedicated to Thomas Chatterton, the mammoth
poem failed to strike a chord with the critics who blatantly
rebuked Keats style and poetry.
 Two of the most influential critical magazines, Quarterly
Review and Blackwood's Magazine, attacked Keats
severely as they attacked Hunt and his literary circle too,
calling them, ‘the Cockney school of poetry’. They even
suggested Keats to give up poetry for good.
 The criticism led Keats to re-examine the role of poetry in
the society. During this time, Keats started formulating a
theory behind the famous doctrine, ‘Negative Capability’.
 In the summer of 1818, Keats embarked on a walking tour
to North England and Scotland finally settling at the
Wentworth Place, where he attended to the ailing health of
his brother Tom, who had contracted tuberculosis.
 Keats’ stay at Wentworth Place proved to be annus
mirabilis as he was deeply inspired by the lectures of Hazlitt
on English poets. Also, it was during this time that he met
Wordsworth.
 Keats came up with his first Shakespearean sonnet, ‘When
I have Fears that I may Cease to be’. Next he came up with
‘Isabella’, which depicted a story of a woman who falls in
love with a man who is beneath her social standing than the
one chosen by her family.

17.  Other works of Keats released during this time include: ‘To
Autumn’, ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’, ‘La Belle Dame sans
Merci’, ‘Hyperion’, ‘Lamia’ and ‘Otho’. While ‘Hyperion’
dealt with the story of the Titans’ despondency after their
losses to the Olympians, ‘To Autumn’ explained the
ripening of the fruit and the ambience of sleepy workers and
maturing sun.
 Much of Keats’ greatest works were released during April
and May of 1819; these include: ‘Ode to Psyche’, ‘Ode to a
Nightingale’, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ and ‘Ode on
Melancholy’.
Personal Life & Legacy
 Keats was supposedly into a relationship with Isabella
Jones, who he drew inspiration from for many of his works.
A talented and beautiful female, he first met her while
holidaying in the village of Bo Peep, near Hastings.
 In 1818, while nursing his younger brother Tom, Keats first
met Fanny Brawne. The two developed an intimacy towards
each other, which resulted in Brawne shifting to the other
half of Dilke's Wentworth Place in April of 1819.
 The two started spending considerable time together. It is
also argued that Keats gave Fanny Brawne a love sonnet,
‘Bright Star’, which was half done as a declaration of his
love to her.
 Though the two went into some sort of an understanding, it
was far from being a formal engagement as Keats had
nothing much to offer Brawne in terms of security and
prospects.
 Tuberculosis, which had become a family disease, struck
Keats too, who was advised to move to a place of a warmer
climate. In 1820, he displayed increasingly serious

18. symptoms of tuberculosis, suffering two lung
haemorrhages. He lost too much of blood.
 Upon reaching Rome in November 1820, he moved into a
villa on the Spanish Steps. His health depleted rapidly and
deteriorating further by 1821, so much so that he cried after
waking up to find himself alive.
 Keats breathed his last on February 23, 1821. He was
buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. His tombstone
bears no name or date, only the words, ‘Here lies One
whose Name was writ in Water’, as per his last wish.
 About seven weeks after his death, Keats was
memorialized by Shelley in his poem, ‘Adonais’.
Furthermore, his house at Wentworth Palace and Rome
were turned into memorials.
 Several of Keats letters, manuscripts, and other papers
have been archived at the Houghton Library at Harvard
University. Many others are present at British Library,Keats
House, Hampstead, the Keats-Shelley Memorial House in
Rome and the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.
 In commemoration of Keats, the Royal Society of Arts
unveiled a blue plaque in 1896 at Keats House.
 Since 1998, the British Keats-Shelley Memorial Association
have annually awarded a prize for romantic poetry
 Upon reaching Rome in November 1820, he moved into a
villa on the Spanish Steps. His health depleted rapidly and
deteriorating further by 1821, so much so that he cried after
waking up to find himself alive.

19. Trivia
 The film ‘Bright Star’ released in 2009, written and directed
by Jane Campion, focuses on the relationship of this
endowed poet with Fanny Brawne.
 One of the principal poets of the English Romantic
movement, much of his popularity was for his written verses
of the odes, including ‘Ode to Psyche’, ‘Ode to a
Nightingale’, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ and ‘Ode on
Melancholy’.