Famed poet Robert Frost once waited until July to get his Christmas cards in the mail

[The Straight Story]

HANOVER, N.H. (AP) — Take heart, holiday procrastinators: Famed poet Robert Frost once waited until July to get his Christmas cards in the mail.

Unlike the flimsy, forgettable cards of today, however, Frost's cards arguably were worth the wait. For the past 28 years of his life, he teamed up with a boutique printer to send beautifully illustrated booklets featuring a different poem for each year.

Dartmouth College, which Frost briefly attended as a student and later returned as a lecturer, has collected more than 500 of the cards, including the first installment, which was sent without Frost's knowledge.

In 1929, Joseph Blumenthal of the New York-based Spiral Press, who was setting type for one of Frost's poetry collections, decided the poem "Christmas Trees" would make an attractive greeting card. With permission from Frost's publisher, he printed 275 copies, one of which eventually made its way to Frost. The poet liked it so much, he decided to collaborate with Blumenthal on cards starting in 1934. The resulting series lasted until 1962, the year before his death.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/robert-frosts-christmas-cards-collected-nh

[graham4anything]

1. or, He sent out his cards 5 months early, not 7 months late!

great fun article.

[JDPriestly]

2. I wonder was this one of his Christmas poems?

An Old Man's Winter Night

All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.
Robert Frost

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-old-man-s-winter-night/

Thanks for this wonderful reminder.