When
I was in junior high and high school, there was one poem that had managed to
find its way into all of the textbooks for American literature: “Stopping by
Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. I don’t think I ever heard from a
teacher (or read in a textbook) anything about the context of the poem, but
context didn’t matter. American poetry meant Robert Frost, and Robert Frost
meant “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
If
that poem alone wasn’t enough, a second Frost poem sealed the contract: “The Road Not Taken.” For tens of
millions of Baby Boomers, Robert Frost, and these two poems in particular, were
our first definition of poetry. (One American literature teacher I had in high
school had us read Frost first, and then start at the chronological beginning.)
I
don’t know if “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is still included in
textbooks today; probably not, since it implies the existence of God and
schools can be rather ruthless about such subjects. But it was an enormously
influential poem, and even Frost considered it that way, having told fellow
poet Louis Untermeyer (who was poet laureate consultant to the Library of
Congress in 1961) that the poem was “my best bid for remembrance.”
To
continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak
Poetry.
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