Comments on: Teaching Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

By: jd

jd — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 23:21:01 +0000

I could have used some appropriate galoshes today — the ground here is covered with slush. I think Wagoner wrote his poem in reply to a critic who said of Wylie’s poem, “Had the poet written, ‘Let us put on appropriate galoshes’, there could, of course, have been no poem. I’m quoting from memory so I may not have that exactly right, but clearly Wagoner is demonstrating that primary requirement of poets to take perverse delight in puncturing conventional wisdom.

By: Laura Jensen

Laura Jensen — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:49:25 +0000

My blog Spice Drawer Mouse is listed at Sharp Sand under poets, but I do not usually comment although I read – ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowey Evening’ should be an easy poem to comment about. I have wanted to link to YouTube because there was a video last summer called Creating ‘First Class’, a play about Theodore Roethke. This shows John Aylward, with Kurt Beattie and David Wagoner. When I buy earphones I can plan to hear what they have said. To think of David Wagoner’s poem ‘Walking in the Snow’, which refers to a critical comment on Elinor Wylie’s poem,’Velvet Shoes’, is a winter idea, and since David Wagoner’s poem begins, “Let us put on appropriate galoshes…” a Focus the Nation concern is also met.

By: jd

jd — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:39:46 +0000

Pablo, yes. You catch my drift. In this case, though, the fault lies partly with the poem / poet & partly with our cultural desire to codify & over-simplify. Frost wrote many other poems that don’t invite sentimental simplifications so much as “Stopping by Woods . . .”

By: pablo

pablo — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:12:45 +0000

Fortunately, I had never heard the suicide interpretation.

I have a similar visceral reaction to sculpture (assuming I understood your point). If a figurative sculpture is too literal, too perfect at reproducing the person depicted (down to the rivets in their jeans) then I’m not interested in it. Seems like a waste of good metal to me. I’d rather look at a sculpture that skews reality a bit and calls for some analysis or contemplation. (I especially like Giacometti.) I like a sculpture to which I must bring something.

Maybe that’s sort of what you were saying with your poetry musings.

By: edward mycue

edward mycue — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 03:27:02 +0000

yes, that’s how it is. wonder, and rue, for the speaker of the poem. and for the trenchant reader–
s/he who is prompted by the poem to explain the self to the self, the self that tells so many lies, the self that evades, dissembles, denies, recognizes dimly at first before acknowledging the balance of disclosure & closure and then moving on in victory that is an acceptance in failure. a self that to survive half-sleeps and also has seen beauty plain.
edward mycue