After reading Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats, Friar became fascinated with the energy of the English language and he determined to master it.
He went on to University of Michigan for his master's degree in 1940, and he won the Avery Hopwood Major Award for Yeats: A Vision.
[citation needed] Although he was dedicated to writing and translating poetry, Friar began teaching to support himself soon after leaving the University of Michigan.
The plays produced there were primarily from the works of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, and Archibald MacLeish.
[citation needed] During his time at Amherst, Friar became the teacher and first lover of American poet James Merrill.
Some critics declared that Friar lost his way in the double adjectives and complex language of the original (Kazantzakis used ancient vocabulary that is generally unknown to metropolitan scholars), and others agreed that Friar was at his best when he chose the prosaic word over the contrived or archaic.