“Writing a poem is discovering,” Robert Frost once said. The place of such discovery for Frost himself, this year’s poet in residence and many others is Frost Place, a modest farmstead perched high on a rolling hill covered in wildflowers, nestled in the White Mountains in Franconia.
Rose McLarney will be writing — and discovering — in Frost Place, where Frost himself lived for five years full-time and later spent 19 summers for eight weeks as the 2016 poet in residence. McLarney is a poet and professor at Auburn University and poetry editor of the Southern Humanities Review.
After realizing her passion for writing poetry after college, McLarney completed a masters program at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. She has since published two collections of poetry and received multiple national poetry awards.
While other poets may be intimidated by the rural setting, McLarney views her visit to the Upper Valley as a homecoming of sorts. McLarney grew up in Southern Appalachia and much of her poetry incorporates elements of the mountainous landscape and various related ecological issues.
“I was so deeply connected to those mountains,” she said. “I can write more about the feeling and the atmosphere there than I can about most people.”
In her affinity for writing about environments, she is a fitting match for Frost Place, named for one of the giants of American nature writing. Although Frost was one of the great twentieth century American poets, to Dartmouth students and faculty, he is “ours.” The poet was briefly a student of the College and later a faculty member.
Since his death, Frost Place has become a nonprofit educational center for poetry and the arts and a museum, serving the Upper Valley and attracting visitors from across New England. Frost Place was founded in 1976 when a group of neighbors led by David Schaffer and Evangeline Machlin persuaded the town of Franconia to approve the purchase of the farmhouse where Robert Frost and his family lived full-time from 1915 to 1920 and spent 19 summers. The center sponsors an annual festival and conference on poetry, a teachers’ conference and an advanced seminar with a distinguished faculty of Pulitzer Prize winners and Guggenheim Fellows, along with various other creative events.
“Our mission is simple: to promote the creation and appreciation of poetry and honor Frost’s legacy,”said Maudelle Driskell, executive director of Frost Place.
Frost’s legacy lives on through the prose and diction of the Robert Frost poets in residence, an annual poetry fellowship where a poet is invited to live and work at Frost Place for several months over the summer. Since 1977, the center has awarded the fellowship to a poet at time of personal transformation.
Residency alumni include prominent contemporary poets, among them Katha Pollitt, Robert Hass, William Matthews, Mark Halliday, Laura Kasischke, Rebecca Foust, Todd Hearon and David Graham ’75 and English professor Cleopatra Mathis.
“When selecting applicants, we look at more than their body of work and their accomplishments,” Driskell said. “We hope to select candidates at the same crossroads that Frost was when he came to Franconia, before later achieving wide success.”
For McLarney, the environment of the Frost Place could be a major inspiration. The landscape acts as more than a backdrop in her poetry, but as a character in her stories. She is excited to reenter a rural setting and be immersed in nature in the White Mountains, to recharge, reflect and refocus on her next body of work.
“As a poet concerned with environment, working while looking out at the landscape Frost chose will inspire the articulation of my own ideas about the land on which we live, and on which we leave our ruins, and bring focus to my poems,” McLarney said. “Meanwhile, interactions with other writers and readers through The Frost Place and Dartmouth’s programs will, as shared love of literature does, wonderfully widen my view.”
Frost also grappled with environmental change throughout his career. He lamented the damage being done to the natural world but also greatly admired the beauty that remained in nature.
“The New England landscape he was writing about was already imperfect,” McLarney said. “It is not like he lived this pastoral ideal that most people think. He was also looking at a real, compromised world, but was able to create incredibly beautiful poems that are critical of humanity while never failing to find the beauty in his surroundings.”
Driskell wants the poet in residence program to be more than a typical artistic residency. She noted that the Frost poets are expected to come prepared to complete a significant chunk of their work, embrace the vagaries of nature in the Upper Valley and connect with the communities of Franconia and Dartmouth.
Dartmouth has a long and close relationship with Frost Place, financially supporting the poets in residence program since 2012. The College also hosts poetry readings and workshops with the poets in residence throughout the summer and the center offers multiple scholarship opportunities for students in the creative writing program. The master of liberal studies program also offers its students two scholarships to the conference each year.
McLarney hopes to engage with students at the College. As a teacher herself, McLarney is disturbed by the increasing pursuit of education limited to “career tracks or job training paths” and stresses the importance of a liberal arts education. She encourages students to “keep writing poetry because you love it, not because you hope to make a career out of it.”
Mathis, a former poet-in-residence in 1982, valued her time at the Frost Place.
“The program truly opens the door to the world of poetry, to a whole new community of readers and poetry friends,” Mathis said.
McLarney plans to continue this history of creative introspection while also engaging with the local communities of Franconia and Dartmouth. With the Upper Valley landscape as the setting and a family of readers and writers supporting her, McLarney will carry on Frost’s legacy as she dives deeply into her own writing. She hopes to invest the time to get to know Frost Place intimately to create something of beauty.
“Frost would be charmed by the idea that people would want to be in his house, read his work and pay homage to him,” Mathis said.
The extraordinary legacy of Robert Frost rests safely in the hands of Frost Place. The center and its’ programs will continue to foster the next generation of creative minds, encouraging individuals to “take the road less travelled by.”
