Tags
dversepoets, Gay Cannon, poetry, poetry prompt, Robert Frost, Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, Writing
Robert Frost’s poem STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING is an iconic poem. In my copy of Louis Untermeyer’s Modern American Poets, he quotes Frost as saying the poem was “my best bid for remembrance”. I’ve always loved the form, the easiness, and I suppose the “American-ess” of it. There is light and dark, mystery and sweetness, and a winter beauty complete with a winter solstice snow and a horse and rider in silhouette. Here is a copy of the entire poem:
STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING
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.
by Robert Frost
Written in June, 1922, he had only just finished his long poem New Hampshire which had taken him quite some time. Wikipedia claims the idea and poem came over him as a sort of hallucination. I was told in my lectures on Frost, that it was an image that seized him and he wrote it down immediately, only doing a little bit of revision before sending it off.
He wrote it in iambic tetrameter, shaping the poem in Rubaiyat stanzas originally created by Edward Fitzgerald. Each verse (except the last) follows an a-a-b-a rhyming scheme, with the b line in each stanza setting the main rhyme in the following stanza making it a chain rhyme. The end result is a rhyme scheme of AABA-BBCB-CCDC-DDDD. It was a kind of genius to repeat the last two lines in this particular poem because the repetition adds to the mystery and the metaphor. However, when using this pattern for your poem, I don’t think that would be a requirement. The natural thing would be to invent another line, yet ending in the same rhyme. There is a beautiful order here of four stresses or beats to the line, four verses with four different rhymes laced together. I think that is why this for me and so many others is so satisfying.
Frost’s poem has been used in several eulogies. I think it is ideally suited to giving depth and meaning to a subject. I have used it once myself with some success. My co-worker Mona asked me to write a poem for her. I had put it off for a while but when her birthday came up, and I had some dead time one day, I wrote it for her. It has been published a couple of times and you could find it on my blog, but I will reprint it here to show you what I did with it, and see if you find it as compelling as a form as I did. I hope you will use it to write a new poem. I think you will be pleased with the results.
MONA’S SONG
Remembering her life unplanned
A window that was her dreamland
She left a bleak and cruel life
To build on rock instead of sand.
She walked through streets of hate and strife
Where words cut deeper than a knife.
She kept her thoughts as straight as pins
From child to mom; from girl to wife.
To learn! The key to those big wins
With judgment keen and sharp as fins.
When truth was poured into her soul
It washed away her stinging sins.
Her life had been an empty bowl,
Though failures took a grievous toll,
Each year she gains more self control;
Her faith renewed now makes her whole.
by Gay Reiser Cannon
The challenge is to write a poem in this form. Click on your address line and copy that onto Mr. Linky. Read and comment on your fellow poets. If looking for their poems, check back to Mr. Linky, (the blenza page) and click on their links.
Welcome to the pub everyone. Hope everyone is having a good Thursday. We have hot and cold drinks at the bar and there are some sandwiches on the side board. Pull up a chair by the window and read your fellow poets today. Hope everyone had a good time considering Frost’s Winter Poem. Thanks for coming by~
love frost’s poem… and whew – was quite a challenge to write one… i stuck to the rhyme scheme yet my syllable count got a bit out of control…smiles
Yours was lovely – the topic of wanderlust. To some degree it has shaped your career and thus your explorations! I encourage everyone to read it!I
I paid no attention to the syllable count; perhaps screwed the pooch on that one; still found it fun to write though.
Claudia, you did extremely well with the form, I think. It is hard to write ‘form’ in one’s native language. To attempt to write form in a second language….well, let me tell you I appreciate the difficulty, and yours was great!!
When I started writing poetry in English not too long ago a twitter friend said I should check out Robert Frost, and this one absolutely captivated me.. I have since learned it’s one of the most popular poems in the English language.. I followed the form as exactly as I possibly could..
Bjorn yours was so rich. What an effective poem, and how intriguing that these short 16 lines can dig so deep into the subject and explore emotions by implication. I am very impressed with this work!
Bjorn, you are SO good with forms! I am always very impressed with how well you use them.
only my 3rd time doing form, but gee, I really enjoyed it! I usually struggle, but this time it was smooth writing… I followed the form to a T and it was a pleasure 🙂 Thanks, Gay!
yours was beautifully intimate anthony
Thanks Claudia 🙂
I loved yours Anthony.. I think you should develop this more and add that modern touch.. 🙂
certainly; this won’t be my last… 🙂
Yeah, Anthony, the trail is fresh & short for the moment, but your piece lit up the cyber lanes like an urban romantic hip-hop bitch-slap love-tap; very cool.
So impressed with your poem, Anthony!
Anthony, I think this form seemed to fit you. You wrote it well. I think you should try this form again from time to time, as you seemed a natural….
you rocked the form for sure anthony…
Oh, I love this. It will be a nice challenge. And I think you were very succesfull with your poem, for me it rings trully modern, despite being presented in a nintey years old form.
The Rubai of Fitzgerald is even older, and he in turns derived it from Persian poetry almost 1000 years old.. 🙂
I totally agree… def has a modern feel to it 🙂 great poetry is timeless
I love the depth this form gives. Frost work takes on levels and levels of ambiguity. It seemed to me a fairly organic way of writing. I enjoyed it very much. Thank you for your comment.
Thank you. I did write a new one today that becomes a part of a collection I’m writing on the Major Arcana.
This is a truly lovely prompt. I wish I were not sick with the evil flu and felt like attempting something in this form. I have loved this poem since the first time I read it. I think it is because of this poem, I came into the habit of walking around at night, in the snow or while snowing, watching the snow “fill up my woods”.
oh i hope you’re feeling better soon… and sometimes poetry can be a wonderful cure as well…smiles
It does. I just posted two haiku I’vee had in my head the last couple of weeks. It was a very pleasant respite from ickiness. I am going to attempt this anyway at some point. I’d never thought of “parking by a field of tobacco” in this context before (poem I’ve been working on for several months” but it might be a good variation. 🙂
that sounds interesting…
I have come down with a flu too.. working from home and will soon head to bed. 🙂 But I am sure poetry will help 🙂
It always does. I’m taking my tablet to bed with me and reading in between times of not feeling icky. I posted two haiku that have been in brain for a couple of weeks. Tnat was a most excellent diversion for a few moments.
ugh… get better soon björn…
Hope it’s the 3 day variety of flu we had. After that the phlegm hangs on, but you feel perfectly fine. The other one going around down here is a long one with lots of aches and pains. Feeling for all you guys.
Bjorn, sorry to hear that. A lot of people have the flu in this area as well.
Feel better… just getting over a bad cold myself… poetry is a good temporary relief tho… smiles
Thank you. It is amzing, even sick we think of our writing.
So true, Anthony. I think poetry can at least take one’s mind off being sick….
What an imaginative way to dip us into a form, to pick a famous poem, & call for the use of that particular rhyme scheme. This one, maybe because the rhyme has a beat to it that appeals to me, maybe because Frost is one of my favorites (in line behind Whitman, of course). So, too often I feel like Anthony mentioned, that a rhyme scheme can feel “forced”, choppy, sing-song; but somehow this time it did not seem to get in the way of the poetics, & emerged as fun; thanks.
I love Frost and Dickinson. I find both eminently modern and agree they organically follow from Whitman who turned me onto poetry to begin with. Whitman for me is the first beat poet. Some people choose one or the other of these two New England poets but their work does something different. For me, Frost’s work (at its best and mainly in the short poems) is the essence of getting to the truth through simplicity; Dickinson’s vision and terseness is unparalleled and forever stays fresh for me. It’s like finding her anew every time I read her.
hey… it’s getting late over here and i’m heading to bed… will be up early tomorrow morning to catch up with you…
Thank you Claudia. See you tomorrow!
Yes, I will have a go at this – a lovely form – but not tonight! Thank you for the reminder to write more in meter.
Looking forward to it Viv.
Ugh, the poem that I wrote was so trite and simplistic that I decline to post , even though it says what I wanted to say. I will try again, probably for OLN
What the heck. Posted anyway, after a bit of editing, ready for honest criticism.
Love this prompt Gay – thank you. Maybe the old grey cells have become agitated again… and if so, long may it continue.
Cheers!
Anna :o]
Thank you – glad it had that effect. Same for me.
Dear Gay
I do so love so that a response to your prompt has eaten away much of my afternoon and early evening – proof I am alive again!
Kind regards
Anna :o]
Thank you Gay for reminding us of this lovely poem ~ I struggled with the form but finally got the scheme (I think) ~
Wishing you all Happy Thursday ~
Gay, I love the Frost poem you shared; and actually I enjoy working with the form. I had a busy day today (I will spare you), but I will try to work with the form tonight or tomorrow. I always enjoy your well-thought-out prompts!
What a wintry time you all must be having! Snow and Frost all month long.
I’m afraid my contribution this time is choppy in rhyme and meter… and content too, I suppose.
I think not. I enjoyed it.
Friday the 13th and my entry is number 13. Sweet. 😀
hey gay….struggling to get mine to sound better than bad rhyming poetry…ha…i am trying…and hopefully will return tomorrow with a go….
I know you will find your way through it Brian – looking forward to what you come up with!
This is one of my favorite Frost poem.
This was a cool exercise as I needed to write a form poem, it is so easy to do free verse and avoid structure, LOL……and Frost’s poem has such a familiar meter, it was easier than other well known poems might have been.
It was an interesting task and my efforts are, I believe, mediocre but I enjoyed it all the same. 🙂
I like Frost and Dickenson, too. I’m afraid I am a little off with the iambic pentameter, though. I will be around to comment later as I’m keeping watch over grandkids this winter break which started this week.
Dang, can;t believe I missed this. Linky’s closed but I wanted to share–
Sitting by TV on a Snowy Evening
Be-be-be-because, he starts,
stutters breaking words apart,
intoning what he’d overheard;
it’s painful listening, like darts
prying loose repeated words.
Naught’s amiss, we say, the birds
they laugh at us, ignored lampoons
and bullies’ taunts, how absurd.
He sits and watches his cartoon-
two mice who call a cat buffoon
I hate mieces to pieces! shouts
Jinx the cat; it ends too soon.
Our son despises school, flat out.
We believe him, there’s no doubt
But he’s a well-adjusted sprout
But he’s a well-adjusted sprout.
This is lovely ~ We have OpenLinkNight currently, so you can link it up in that post ~