26 March 2017
— light mist transubstantiating into velvet fog
Good Morning All,
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert
Frost - '1874'
Whose
woods these are I think I know.
His
house is in the village though;
He
will not see me stopping here
To
watch his woods fill up with snow.
My
little horse must think it queer
To
stop without a farmhouse near
Between
the woods and frozen lake
The
darkest evening of the year.
He
gives his harness bells a shake
To
ask if there is some mistake.
The
only other sound's the sweep
Of
easy wind and downy flake.
The
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.
If he’d put less syrup on his pancakes, Robert Frost would have been 143 today. If he’d … well, come to think of it, syrup or no, he’d still have been 143 today. As it was, he did make to 89, hanging around just long enough to add his grace to JFK’s inauguration.
Today’s Day Book entry includes what may be his most famous poem, unless it is The Road Not Taken, Birches, or Mending Wall.
On most days, it is my second most favorite poem. My all time favorite is always Fiddler Jones, by good old Edgar Lee Masters. On some days, The Waking by Theodore Roethke, sneaks into second place.
But most days, the second slot belongs to Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
Today’s Day Book entry includes what may be his most famous poem, unless it is The Road Not Taken, Birches, or Mending Wall.
On most days, it is my second most favorite poem. My all time favorite is always Fiddler Jones, by good old Edgar Lee Masters. On some days, The Waking by Theodore Roethke, sneaks into second place.
But most days, the second slot belongs to Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
It was also always the first poem I would read with my spanking new tenth graders every September. I was only too well aware that by grade ten, most kids have developed fairly sophisticated Distant-Early-Warning Systems, poetry-proof Kevlar jackets, and nearly ballet-like evasive moves to defend against anything on the horizon looking or smelling anything like poetry.
For the most part, they’d been aided and abetted by middle-school teachers gleefully shoving Shakespeare at his most flowery, Whitman at his most gushing, and Edmund Spenser at his ever worst.
Who could blame the kids? I was the same way myself until Masters, Dickinson, and Frost slipped in through a bathroom window
Anyway, I would normally start the class by saying something like, “All right, you ladles and jelly-spoons, today we are going to take a look at something even more dreadful and skin-rash producing than grammar. It is so horrible, in fact, that I shall only hint to you that it begins with the letter P and rhymes with the phrase grow-a-tree. I shall say that you should give that famous American horror story writer Edgar Alan Poe a try.
Then, while they were looking at me funny, I’d write the first line of the poem on the left side of the board, and say, “Will someone please put that into proper prose in the normal way normal people talk. Someone would; I’d write on the right side of the board, and “Whose woods these are I think I know” would turn into: “I think I know who owns these woods.”
We’d do the whole poem that way, the only rule being there could be nothing poetic in it. No rhyme, no alliteration, no similes, no personification, no funny syntax. Just good old work-a-day prose.
We’d usually end up with something like this:
I think I know who owns these woods, but he lives in the small town. He won’t see me stopped here to look at the snowflakes falling through the trees. My little horse, if it could think, might conclude it was strange to stop where there are no houses, on this road between the woods and a lake covered with ice, on a dark night, but not so dark I can’t see the snowflakes falling. My horse twists its neck, which makes the harness bells shake. You might think that if a horse could think it would be asking if anything were wrong. The only other sound is that of the wind. You might try to imagine that the snowflakes themselves make a sound, but of course they don’t. Anyway, I find this dark and wide forest quite beautiful, but I better get going because I have a lot of stuff to do and quite a long way to go before I get home.
Of course we always had a hell of a good time doing this because the kids were always trying to slip something poetic in there, like saying the snowflakes looked like goose down, and I’d accuse them of trying to make poetry without a license. Three or four girls would argue passionately that horses were capable of ratiocination, or I’d have to remind them the woods were not really filling up with snow, and the wind was not really a broom.
Anyway, I would normally start the class by saying something like, “All right, you ladles and jelly-spoons, today we are going to take a look at something even more dreadful and skin-rash producing than grammar. It is so horrible, in fact, that I shall only hint to you that it begins with the letter P and rhymes with the phrase grow-a-tree. I shall say that you should give that famous American horror story writer Edgar Alan Poe a try.
Then, while they were looking at me funny, I’d write the first line of the poem on the left side of the board, and say, “Will someone please put that into proper prose in the normal way normal people talk. Someone would; I’d write on the right side of the board, and “Whose woods these are I think I know” would turn into: “I think I know who owns these woods.”
We’d do the whole poem that way, the only rule being there could be nothing poetic in it. No rhyme, no alliteration, no similes, no personification, no funny syntax. Just good old work-a-day prose.
We’d usually end up with something like this:
I think I know who owns these woods, but he lives in the small town. He won’t see me stopped here to look at the snowflakes falling through the trees. My little horse, if it could think, might conclude it was strange to stop where there are no houses, on this road between the woods and a lake covered with ice, on a dark night, but not so dark I can’t see the snowflakes falling. My horse twists its neck, which makes the harness bells shake. You might think that if a horse could think it would be asking if anything were wrong. The only other sound is that of the wind. You might try to imagine that the snowflakes themselves make a sound, but of course they don’t. Anyway, I find this dark and wide forest quite beautiful, but I better get going because I have a lot of stuff to do and quite a long way to go before I get home.
Of course we always had a hell of a good time doing this because the kids were always trying to slip something poetic in there, like saying the snowflakes looked like goose down, and I’d accuse them of trying to make poetry without a license. Three or four girls would argue passionately that horses were capable of ratiocination, or I’d have to remind them the woods were not really filling up with snow, and the wind was not really a broom.
At the end of it, I’d say, “Okay, vote. Be honest and shame the devil. Which do you like better: Frost’s stinky poem or our lovely prose version?”
But since this is getting long, I better wait until tomorrow to give you those results. Plus—just to warn you—we may also take a look at the less obvious reasons for why this little ditty consistently comes in among the top ten—even in England—of the best-loved poems of all time.
Go Well and Stay Well,
Bhekaron
But since this is getting long, I better wait until tomorrow to give you those results. Plus—just to warn you—we may also take a look at the less obvious reasons for why this little ditty consistently comes in among the top ten—even in England—of the best-loved poems of all time.
Go Well and Stay Well,
Bhekaron
P.S. Oh, and by the way, would you mind memorizing the poem before tomorrow? It’s pretty easy, and you are allowed to cheat by memorizing the end words first.
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