Robert Frost (1874–1963) and Edward Thomas (1878–1917) are the Pound and Eliot of regular verse, twentieth-century poets who, by tearing off the fustian and listening to how people actually speak, showed how “making it new” need have nothing to do with modernism. And while Frost is much the better known, few rival Thomas as a poets’ poet—the many who have paid tribute to his work include W. H. Auden, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott.
