Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World

Clarke’s gift for portraiture is amply evident in her Academy Award–winning depiction of octogenarian poet Robert Frost—brilliantly edited by Charlotte Zwerin—which shuttles between a series of speaking engagements and scenes of the poet at home in Vermont. Entertaining the audience at Sarah Lawrence, Frost draws attention to the camera crew and to the tension between documentary and performance, saying: “This is a documentary film going on . . . and [the shots] have all been about me with a hoe digging potatoes or walking in the woods, reciting my own poems.” The crowd laughs, as does he, clarifying, “I don’t farm very much—for many years, I have had a little garden—but it is a false picture that presents me as always digging potatoes or saying my own poems.”