A remarkably engaging work of literary analysis, this book employs biography and cultural history to explore the scene of the abandoned house in the lives and work of Frost, Bishop, and Ashbery. It features big name poets: MacArthur selects three poets whose names alone will draw readership and who scan the early 20th century to the present. More and more attention is being focused on Ashbery as he comes to the end of his old age and the combined literary, cultural, and biographical approach to the readings of all three poets will be of much interest to readers.It features an archival and unpublished material: MacArthur draws extensively on Ashbery's papers at Harvard's Houghton Library, much of which has yet to be published or analyzed. Archival material on Bishop's papers and uncollected poems is also used. Frost, Bishop, and Ashbery are rarely discussed as part of a lineage of influence, but this study demonstrates significant links, partly by drawing on archival research. This manuscript as already been footnoted several times in another book, "Elizabeth Bishop, Edgar Allen Poe, and the Juke-Box", due to its contribution to poetry criticism.