Episode Details

Robert Frost is remembered as the kindly New England farmer-poet who wrote about birch trees and snowy woods. The real Frost was consumed by depression, rage, and guilt — a man whose son committed suicide, whose daughter was institutionalized, whose wife died of heart failure after decades of emotional abuse, and who used his folksy public persona to mask one of the darkest inner lives in American letters. "The Road Not Taken" is not the cheerful poem people think it is.

This episode traces Frost from his troubled California childhood through the English years that launched his career, the public fame that disguised private torment, and the family tragedies that shadowed every pastoral verse.

• Frost's California childhood, his father's alcoholism, and the failures that preceded his English breakthrough
• The folksy public persona and the calculated performance of New England simplicity
• The family tragedies — suicide, institutionalization, and the guilt Frost carried
• Why "The Road Not Taken" and "Stopping by Woods" are far darker poems than popular culture assumes