Robert Frost

Karsh, Yousuf, 1908-2002 · 1958

Don't make a saint of me,' said Mr. Frost as he faced my camera in 1958. 'I'm a rascal. Why, they call me Scarface Frost from Chicago.' This was my introduction to the crusty, beloved American poet, an old man who did precisely as he pleased. At the time he was sitting in his littered, chaotic studio at Cambridge, Massachusetts. There he worked at what he pleased to call his desk - a dilapidated piece of Ten-Test supported by a piece of string and a battered walking stick. Yet, I thought, out of all this bedlam comes so much beauty (Karsh, 1976).