My introduction to poetry in middle school primarily consisted of a few poems and poets....there was e.e. cummings that I remember, Longfellow for sure, I vaguely remember an introduction to Dickinson and I definitely remember Robert Frost. I think we all had that introduction to Frost by way of The Road not Taken, but I remember reading ahead in our textbook and finding Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. It immediately became my favorite.

The poem spoke to me....I was a kid who liked to wander into any nearby forest for lengths of time and most of the time alone. It was the nature thing but it was also just liking to be alone in the woods in the deep quiet, lost in my thoughts. For some reason, I also wrapped this poem up in my head with The Waltons. Do you remember that first movie that the Waltons tv show spun off from? It was called The Homecoming: A Christmas Story and I remember Olivia Walton (played by Patricia Neal in the movie) looking out of the house at the snowstorm, worrying about John Walton making it home for Christmas from another part of the state. So...snow, deep quiet forest walks, anxiety about the future...you can see how it all comes together in my middle school mind...right?

Fast forward about 15 years and this poem remained my favorite poem despite having read very little poetry by Robert Frost other than this and The Road Not Taken. In fact, I read very little poetry, period. One day, while sitting in the undergraduate library at UofM, doing anything but what I really needed to do, which was write a paper, I decided to look for a book of Robert Frost's poetry. In the course of looking for one of his books I found a review/reading of the poem, Stopping by Woods, and found out the poem was really about death. That was pretty eye opening to me because I always took the poem so literally but after reading the review and re-reading the poem, I could see how a close reading of the poem could be interpreted this way.

This year, New Hampshire, the book of poems by Frost that Stopping by Woods originally appeared in came into the public domain. When I read this, I knew I would want to find a copy of it and read it...not just that poem but the whole book. Finally, now that I am reading poetry on a regular basis I should at least read a complete book of poems by Frost instead of only the two which seem to be on every middle school kid's syllabus.

I am glad I did but also, the high esteem which I had held for Robert Frost for so long has been lessened a bit...I can't say that he is my favorite poet any longer, nor can I say that Stopping by Woods is my favorite poem, but it is still up there. What I did find, however, is that there are several other poems in New Hampshire that I really liked. The fore section of the book consists mainly of longer poems including, Maple and Paul's Wife, both of which, were very good but too long to quote here. There were also a number of shorter poems that, along with Stopping by Woods, comprised the latter half of the book. Here is one that I liked...Frost uses depictions of snow in many of his poems...

Dust of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

In a Disused Graveyard is also very good as is The Onset, a looming and vivid description of a winter storm and how it burys the forest, people working outside and the village...

The Onset

Always the same, when on a fated night
At last the gathered snow lets down as white
As may be in dark woods, and with a song
It shall not make again all winter long
Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground,
I almost stumble looking up and round,
As one who overtaken by the end
Gives up his errand, and lets death descend....

I think you get the picture, snow, death, dark woods, "gives up his errand, and lets death descend"...pretty common themes in Frost's poetry. Not that I don't like it, I do. It just re-confirms what I read now 25 (?) years ago.

The eponymous poem, New Hampshire, is a slog but I read it all the same and all the way through. For me it is so specifically regional and refers to people and subjects that I simply don't get. At the time for someone in New England, it might have been more relevant but to me it was the most uninteresting poem in a book that contained a number of very good poems.

All in all, it was good to finally and truly read Robert Frost. I understand now....he is one of the best, if not the best American poet of his time and reading a book of his poetry you start to see the common themes and vocabulary he uses from poem to poem. My main diet of poetry these days is by modern authors but I would also suggest it is good to go back and read the classics. ( )

In 1923 Robert Frost published his Selected Poems in the spring followed by this collection in November. The following year he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for it. In addition to the titular poem this collection includes the famous "Fire and Ice", a short poem with resonance from Dante and others.
One of my favorites is "The Onset" that seems an appropriate poem to meditate upon as spring approaches. I think we can see a hint of Dante again in this poem with "the dark woods", and there is also the symbolism of winter coming, of snow falling, a beautiful imagery that a time will descend upon us where our lives are dull, tragic, painful or lonely. Yet in the second stanza hope appears with the recognition that "winter death has never tried the earth but it has failed:". By the end of the poem the transition from death to life is complete when one contrasts the white of "the gathered snow" at night to the living white of the birch tree and hope in family life symbolized by "a clump of houses" and the spiritual life of the church.

"Nothing will be left of white but here a birch,
And there a clump of houses with a church." ( )