{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"164: Robert Frost: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"","description":"This week on StoryWeb: Robert Frost\u2019s poem \u201cStopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.\u201d In honor of the winter solstice Without a doubt, the most famous poem about winter is Robert Frost\u2019s \u201cStopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.\u201d In fact, Garrison Keillor says that this is perhaps the single most famous poem of any kind in the twentieth century. Frost himself called the poem \u201cmy best bid for remembrance.\u201d Written nearly in the blink of an eye in June 1922 after Frost had been up all night finishing his long poem \u201cNew Hampshire,\u201d the poem, said Frost, came to him nearly in an hallucination in just \u201ca few minutes without strain.\u201d It was published the next year in a collection of Frost poems also titled New Hampshire. It\u2019s likely that you know this beloved poem \u2013 and also that you know other Frost poems, such as \u201cAfter Apple-Picking,\u201d \u201cBirches,\u201d \u201cNothing Gold Can Stay,\u201d and of course \u201cThe Road Not Taken.\u201d The thing about Frost\u2019s poems is that they seem, at first glance, to be so simple, so straightforward. In \u201cStopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,\u201d the poem\u2019s speaker is returning home from an errand of some sort on the \u201cdarkest evening of the year,\u201d that is, the winter solstice. He and his horse stop by a wood filling with snow. The horse is impatient to get home, but the man is entranced by the snow piling up in the woods, \u201clovely, dark and deep.\u201d Anyone who has witnessed a deep snow knows the muffled quiet, the hush that descends as the \u201cdowny flake[s]\u201d fall, that magical feeling of being transported almost to another world. Since I live in Colorado, I get to enjoy many such snowfalls each year, and I often say it is like being in a snow globe. But \u201cStopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening\u201d is not just about being in a snow globe in New Hampshire, lovely as that image is. No, anyone who\u2019s read the work of Robert Frost knows that there\u2019s usually more going on in a Frost poem than at first meets the eye. Here, we can\u2019t help but be intrigued by the lines at the poem\u2019s end: \u201cThe woods are lovely, dark and deep, \/ But I have promises to keep, \/ And miles to go before I sleep, \/ And miles to go before I sleep.\u201d Perhaps these lines are literally about a busy man who needs to attend to his obligations and not tarry too long in this transcendent landscape. And maybe he is thinking prosaically about the long journey still ahead toward home. But many readers have sensed that there is more at work here. Drawn into the otherworldliness of the dark woods filling up with snow, the speaker may be thinking on another level of the \u201csweet\u201d relief that death may bring. Like sleep, death is a mystery, an unknowing, potentially a kind of oblivion that seems in some ways attractive to someone, like the poem\u2019s speaker, who is too busy with obligations and errands. Might it be nice to simply succumb to these woods, \u201clovely, dark and deep\u201d as they are? Then again, maybe this is just a slice-of-life nature poem about appreciating a supremely beautiful winter landscape. A former colleague of mine from my days teaching at West Virginia\u2019s Shepherd University emphatically told students that the poem is not about death as it does not explicitly mention this subject. For that professor, the poem is literally about the narrator needing to get home so he can sleep. But this professor also told students that any given poem has only one meaning and that it is the teacher\u2019s job to ensure that students understand each poem\u2019s single interpretation. I am in a far different camp, as I believe that a rich poem can have multiple interpretations, maybe even contradictory meanings at the same time, that readers bring to the poem their own lives and experiences and that each reader has a unique experience of the poem. I ascribe to Archibald MacLeish\u2019s philosophy: \u201cA poem should not mean but be.\u201d To sample a few of the many interpretations Frost\u2019s poem has elicited, visit the University of Illinois\u2019s outstanding Modern American Poetry website, where you\u2019ll find excerpts from a dozen or so scholars. One critic included here, Clint Stevens, writes, \u201cThere is in the end the uncertainty in choosing between his death impulse and his desire to continue on the road of life. Which wins in the end, I think I know, but it scarcely matters; the speaker has had his solitary vision; whether he stays or goes, the woods will go with him and the reader, who are now well-acquainted with the coming night.\u201d Well said, Mr. Stevens. Well said. To learn more about Frost, you might want to read the Poetry Foundation\u2019s introduction to Frost\u2019s work and philosophy. If you really want to delve into everything Frost, read Jay Parini\u2019s outstanding biography, Robert Frost: A Life \u2013 and check out the Robert Frost postage stamp (along with other U.S. stamps dedicated to American poets!). The definitive collection of Frost\u2019s poetry is The Poetry of Robert Frost. Visit thestoryweb.com\/snowy for links to all these resources and to watch Frost recite this marvelous poem. At the very least, hearing him read the words will transport you to a magical, snowy world. And it just might cause you to reflect on the power of life \u2013 and death \u2013 beyond yourself. And the next time you are lucky enough to enjoy a lovely, deep snowfall, think of Frost\u2019s poems. Happy winter, happy return of the light to all my StoryWeb listeners. ","author_name":"StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups","author_url":"http:\/\/storyweb.libsyn.com\/webpage","html":"