Robert Frost (post 2) heard voices since childhood: “His poems came to him like voices from nowhere,” quotes biographer, in passing, implying most poets do.

“Around the time of his seventh birthday, Frost himself began to hear voices and experience a touch of clairvoyance. His mother found this unsurprising, and comforted him with stories of other gifted people who could see and hear things that ‘ordinary’ people could not. ‘To the end of his life,’ said one friend, ‘Robert believed he could hear voices, real voices. His poems came to him like voices from nowhere. He liked to be alone just to listen, to communicate with the spirit world’ ” (1, p. 15).

Rational, constructive, complex, reappearing, auditory hallucinations—especially in the context of a successful, productive life—are the voices of alternate personalities.

Frost’s history of hearing voices is consistent with the hypothesis of my previous post to explain the contradictions in his “The Road Not Taken.”

If he thought of what his voices told him as gifts from the spirit world, he would not want to revise them to suit the understanding of ordinary people.

Since the biographer, who is a poet and novelist, mentions Frost’s hearing voices in passing, without comment or surprise, he must think that hearing voices is common and normal in poets and novelists.

For related past posts, search “voice” and “voices.”

1. Jay Parini. Robert Frost: A Life. New York, Henry Holt, 1999.