From the letters, for example, they could determine that though Frost was nearly forty years old before he found a publisher for his first book, he confidently seized the day. On 6 August 1913, a few months after the London publication of
A Boy's Will (1913), Frost wrote to his former student John Bartlett: "I am one of the few artists writing. I am one of the few who have a theory of their own upon which all their work down to the least accent is done. I expect to do something to the present state of literature in America."
What Frost did to American literature is now history. Writing in a period dominated by free verse, in a time, as he said in 1935, when poetry was "tried" without punctuation, without capital letters, metric frame, content, phrase, epigram, coherence, logic, consistency—"it was tried without ability"—Frost insisted that poetry have a definite form, that it be dramatic, and that it rely on voice tones to vary the "te turn" effect of the traditional iambic rhythm. Frost chose 4 July 1913 to declare his independence from the ephemeral innovation that bewitched American poets after 1910. He wrote to Bartlett: "To be perfectly frank with you I am one of the most notable craftsmen .of my time.
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