A poet remembered

Robert Frost lived in towns across New England, and a few of those communities have preserved his former residence s .

Franconia, N.H., claims a long, strong connection. Frost and his family lived in the town from 1915 to 1920; he returned for summers through 1938; and it was there that he wrote two of his most famous poems, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and "The Road Not Taken."

Next Sunday the state of New Hampshire will celebrate its annual Frost Day at the poet's home in Franconia. The guest speaker will be Frost scholar Robert Faggen , who edited "The Notebooks of Robert Frost" (Harvard University/Belknap), published in January . The collection of meditations, aphorisms, and other writings offers fresh insights into Frost's craft.

The talk and a reading by Jody Gladding, resident poet at the house this summer, at 2 p.m. will be followed by a reception on the porch.

Few sites in Ireland have been as important to the development of the nation's literary culture as Coole Park, Lady Augusta Gregory's estate in County Galway. It was a gathering place for major Irish writers, and Nobel laureates William Butler Yeats and George Bernard Shaw spent extended periods there.

Gregory's estate is among the places throughout six counties that R. Todd Felton explores in the recently published "A Journey Into Ireland's Literary Revival" (Roaring Forties) . Felton, an Amherst resident and author of "A Journey Into the Transcendentalists' New England ," has produced a history and guidebook packed with anecdotes and maps as well as new and vintage photographs.

In addition to works by well-known writers like Alice Munro, the 2007 edition of "The O. Henry Prize Stories" (Anchor), edited by Laura Furman , offers the striking "In a Bear's Eye," by Yannick Murphy . In just five pages, Murphy, who lives in Reading, Vt. , masterfully explores the terrain between the living and the dead.

In a commentary, Murphy explains: "When a friend of mine died there was a strange twilight period. Because she hadn't been gone for long, I could still think of her as being there. In my mind, I could still talk to her, but how could she be gone if I was still talking to her? It is this twilight period, where in it the person somehow still exists, that I wanted to render on the page." "In a Bear's Eye" is the title story for a collection that Dzanc Books will publish next February .

"New England White," by Stephen L. Carter (Knopf)

"The Prince of Darkness: Fifty Years Reporting in Washington" by Robert D. Novak (Crown)

"Sammy's House," by Kristin Gore (Hyperion)

Karen M. Frank of Northshire Bookstore, in Manchester Center, Vt., recommends "The Rope Walk," by Carrie Brown (Pantheon): "In this beautiful story, set in Vermont, the author gets right into the head of Alice, as she contemplates the preparations for her 10th birthday party, and unfolds all the sights, smells and emotions of a young girl's formative summer including finding a new and unlikely friend and becoming a lifeline for an elderly neighbor who is ill."

Jan Gardner can be reached at JanLGardner@yahoo.com.