“Frost’s early thoughts about poetry are indistinguishable from thoughts about himself”
“There is a pang that makes poetry. I rather like to gloat over it” —Frost to Ward
“I trust I don’t terrify you. I think I have made poetry.” —Frost to Thomas Mosher
Frost did have a lively sense of “play”, and it was play that he demanded of poetry, as the inborn trait that makes the larger virtues tenable. Play of mind, he meant, and play of temper – the quick alternation of moods. But his jokes are too packed with aggression to be counted as humour in the accepted sense.