The Breath of Parted Lips: Voices from the Robert Frost Place, Volume I Book

A collection of 130 poems contributed by Frost Place residents, many of whom have risen to prominence. Some contributors' poems were written during their tenures on the farm. Such poets as Robert Hass, Gary Miranda, Mary Jo Salter, Cleopatra Mathis, Denis Johnson and Stanley Plumly explore the depth and breadth of their time spent in Frost's New Hampshire. Eminent poet Donald Hall wrote the foreword and includes a cache of Frost's poems from Mountain Interval.

Book Magazine

From the category of poems most people might actually want to read comes this anthology of beautifully conceived and artfully made verse from writers invited to the Frost Place residency program during the years 1977-2000. The idea is to gather poets whose literary lives are about where Frost's life was in 1915, when he bought a farm in New Hampshire and, during his subsequent five-year stay, produced some of his greatest work. When Frost arrived, he was forty, fresh from a disappointing visit to England and just enjoying the publications of A Boy's Will and North of Boston. In addition to writing a brief foreword, Hall chooses a sample from Mountain Interval (1916) to set the scene, and what follows is a rich, satisfying anthology of the early work of twenty-four wonderful poets. Editors Davison and Sheehan have provided a generous selection of work from such notables as Katha Pollitt, Robert Haas, William Matthews, Mary Jo Salter, Pattiann Rogers and Stanley Plumly. In a time when so much praise is lavished on cerebral poetry, these works recall the tradition of writing for the mind and the heart.
Stephen Whited