FROST ASSAILS RECENT TREND TO FREE VERSE

Robert Frost Wednesday night told an audience of over 200 servicemen and guests at the fourth of his Fogg Poetry, Readings that the greatest goal of poets today is "to grasp the United States."

"America's hard to see," said Frost. He read his own latest attempt at grasping the American spirit, "Record Stride," introducing it as "just an offhand poem only one deep thing in it."

Frost, drawling casually with no plan or arrangement, treated his listeners as if they were in their own living room. Saying whatever came to his mind, in the wise Vermont way that has made him one of America's greatest living poets, be described poetry as "dwelling on the parity of a fact."

Attacks Free Verse

The distinguished New Englander attacked free verse, terming it something people turn to because "they think it's hivolous to rhyme." "The fascination is in the rhyming," he claimed. "I like to think that nobody knows which word of a pair that rhymes I though up first."

Among the poems read were "Departmental," "The Mountain," "Mending Wall," "Buying a Farm," "The Road Not Taken," and "Line Gang."

Frost is spending the summer on his farm in Vermont. An Associate of Adams House, he holds a chair at Dartmouth.