a need to convince the world of his superiority. From this compulsion, says Hall, Frost constructed his public persona (the simple rustic) and his professional image (the fierce competitor bent on sitting alone atop the "steeple of literary acclaim").
Frost himself believed that he was an evil man who had to be tricked into acts of kindness-he joined in efforts to free poet Ezra Pound from a mental hospital, but only because he thought Pound's release would bring personal publicity. In...