Friday, December 07, 2007

Frost

After Rational Jenn posted an enthusiastic link to my Lightbulb Day post, I got into a little back-and-forth with one of her commenters about whether Robert Frost's poem "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" is about death. I don't think so.

I sought John Enright's opinion, and he has a nice post about it on his blog at
http://john-j-enright.livejournal.com/433810.html

Update: And here, too.
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2 comments:

John Enright said...

I got so interested in the topic that I went on writing about it the next day, mostly quoting sources as to what Frost had to say about the poem. It turns out he thinks people over-interpret it, and that it didn't think it had to do with death

http://john-j-enright.livejournal.com/434135.html

7:46 PM
Jenn Casey said...

I can see how the line "miles to go before I sleep" could be a metaphor for the goals a person might want to accomplish before the end of his life, but until the recent discussion, I had never imagined the whole poem as a metaphor for death. I still don't think the poem is about that at all. I found Mr. Enright's post about Frost's own thoughts about interpretations very interesting.

Of course, we'll be reading it on the 21st for our very first Lightbulb Day Celebration!

10:03 PM

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