When we read Robert Frost's The Silken Tent, we discussed his affair with a married woman named Kathleen Morrison. The poem was written for her. I decided to do some more research on this situation. Kathleen and Frost met in 1918 at Bryn- Mawr where she was editor and chief of the student paper and invited him to lecture there in 1920 when she was a senior. After college Kathleen married a man by the name of Theodore Morrison, an English and Creative Writing professor at Harvard from 1931- 1963. They met again when a colleague of Theodore brought him in the Harvard circle. Frost and the Morrison's became close friends claiming they were like family. When Frost lost his wife, he and Kathleen became very close and as it turns out Frost was very strongly attracted to her. Around 1938, Frost employed Kathleen as his secretary and advisor. This was also about the time they became lovers. Frost wrote both The Witness Tree and The Silken Tent for Kathleen.
I think this is very interesting and we can connect this back to Justin's post as well about Frost's life influencing his poetry not only in a depressing and deathly ways as we see with Home Burial and Death of a Hired Man, but also in lovestruck and happy ways in his poems about Kathleen.
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