Is it not one of your favourite things, to read a story in the context of a place you’re visiting? What a pleasure, say, to read Shantaram when visiting India, or Romeo and Juliet when strolling around Verona.

 

With March 21st marking World Poetry Day, we’ve selected the uncontested bard of modern America, Robert Frost’s poem New Hampshire for all those visiting the States this spring. His longest poem, arguably most humorous and maybe even most controversial.

 

It’s a 34-verse commentary on the greed and commercialization of America, compared to the farmers’ humble intelligence in the Granite state. Frost depicts the different states through single people: “I choose to be a plain New Hampshire farmer / With an income in cash of, say, a thousand / (From, say, a publisher in New York City).” 

 

“A witty and satirical take on each state, and all of America,” says Cynthia Clough, Florida State University literature PhD. Today Frost might compare the simple farmer to the golden-toupeed President in his gold-encrusted New York tower.