The Obscure Impulse

In his review of the two-volume Collected and Uncollected Poems of T.S. Eliot, William H. Pritchard calls Christopher Ricks ‘the most authoritative scholar and critic of Eliot in the world’. With respect to the works of Robert Frost, Pritchard merits a similar tribute. He has commented meticulously on Frost’s writings for more than half a century. Although he has not overseen new editions of Frost’s poetry or prose, he has produced a critical biography, essays, book chapters and introductions that have helped to burnish Frost’s stature amid competing literary judgments since the poet’s death. It began with Pritchard including Frost in Lives of the Modern Poets (1980). Then came the influential Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered (1984), an important corrective to Lawrance Thompson’s biography and the guidebook for a new generation of Frost readers and students. Frost and Eliot, by contrast, gathers occasional prose pieces that have allowed Pritchard to discuss his favourite attributes of both poets, often in response to the posthumous publication of letters, journals and new collections.

Frost was competitive – in his prose writings and speeches, he likened writing poetry to athletic prowess – and Pritchard channels this sensibility in his introduction. Referring to Lives of the Modern Poets, he says, ‘The game of ranking was a way of passionately registering one’s literary taste, claiming that such affirmations and negations made all the difference’. He then acknowledges: ‘In my own case, the major difference I see between my preferences then and now was the accession of Eliot, joining Frost as the most significant candidates for greatness’. But ...