author takes unique approach to fictional biography of Robert Frost

How do you get inside the head of one of America’s most revered and widely read poets? Based on accounts from author Brian Hall, it starts with lots of research. As he prepared to write his latest book, “Fall of Frost,” Hall poured through thousands of the poet’s writings, lectures, recordings, letters and biographies. Then, with 18 months left on his contract with Viking Press, he started to write.

Hall read from his novel at Portsmouth Public Library on June 18 and described the process of turning real events from Frost’s life into a fictional biography. While standard biographies can supply curious readers with endless facts, Hall said, his goal was to reveal the thoughts that may have drifted through Frost’s mind as he crafted his masterful poems, focusing on details of his private and family life. He hopes that his book begins to shed some light on a couple of important questions.

“For a writer, where do the poems come from? Where does the writing come from?” Hall asked. 

Although he rarely spoke of them in public, Frost’s private life was riddled with tragedies. One of his sons died at the age of 3 and another committed suicide. One of his daughters died while giving birth and another was institutionalized for paranoid delusions. According to Hall, Frost’s wife, Elinor, never recovered from the deaths of her children.

Frost, who died in 1963 at the age of 88, almost didn’t recover himself. Hall said Frost was suicidal after his first child, Elliott, died in 1900. The poet was forced to confront some grave questions.
“How do you deal with this? What do you do? Are you just gonna be broken by it, or are you going to make yourself go on?” Hall asked.

Presumably, writing became an outlet to help Frost deal with his grief. In his book, Hall bases all the content around real, documented incidents, fabricating only the poet’s thoughts. The resulting insights are designed to help readers understand the private pain that fueled much of Frost’s writing.

Hall read three of the book’s 130 chapters at the library. One chapter finds Frost laboring away at a poem on his Derry farm in 1920 when he is spooked by a noise in the night. After exploring the source of this noise with a lantern, the poet arrives at some memorable lines, such as, “A light he was to no one but himself.” These lines eventually formed the poem “An Old Man’s Winter Night,” which Hall later read in its entirety.

When he was finished reading, Hall opened the floor to questions from the 30 to 40 people in attendance. One guest asked whether Hall worried about injecting so much speculation into Frost’s writing process. Hall suggested that even standard biographies are based largely on the author’s speculation. Hall did the same thing, but instead of linking various events with writings and implying a connection, he put the thoughts directly into Frost’s head in a fictional, third-person narrative. Hall meticulously footnoted the sources behind his speculations.

The approach did not make Hall entirely popular with Frost’s estate. At least two of Frost’s surviving heirs despised the book, while at least two others approved, Hall said. But he believes his book provides a more reliable account than that of Frost’s official biographer, Lawrence Thomas, who grew to loathe Frost and presented many aspects of his life in a highly negative way, according to Hall.

This was Hall’s first reading from “Fall of Frost” in New Hampshire, where Frost wrote the bulk of his most well-known poetry. “It was at the Derry farm that Frost found his voice as a poet,” Hall said.

Hall authored three previous novels, including “I Should Be Extremely Happy In Your Company,” an account of the Lewis and Clark expedition. He has also written three nonfiction books and published journalism. His next book, he said, will not be biographical. “I’m looking forward to doing a book where nobody … gets mad at me,” he said to laughter.

Hall’s reading last week represented the first collaboration between Portsmouth Public Library and RiverRun Bookstore. The library’s Levenson Room has become a hot spot for author events and book discussions, and the Summer Cinema Series continues on Thursday, June 26 at 7 p.m., with a presentation of “Things We Lost in the Fire.”