ABSTRACT
In revisiting the Derry years (1900-1911), capped by a year in Plymouth, New Hampshire, where Robert Frost taught at the Plymouth Normal School, the author was able to identify the root cause of the Frost family's persistent nostalgia and homesickness while in England, as well as the root in experience that informs the poet's verses and distinguishes them from his fellow poets on both sides of the Atlantic. Two important areas in the poet's life are reflected in both the children's notebooks and in his own poetry from the Derry years: his teaching experience at Pinkerton Academy in Derry Village and at the Plymouth Normal School, on the one hand, and, on the other, his experience working the Derry farm and interacting with his family, now grown to six. Life and poetry were so intimately related at home, in fact, that only Elinor was fully cognizant of her husband's personal ambition.
