Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

For the past fifteen years I have always started my diary with “and miles to go… before I sleep”. I became familiar with these verses when I was 11. It’s been long 19 years, yet I could remember this poem even now. Some say, ‘a child's mind  is like a blank white paper – what is written on it stays for ever’. Many of us would have learned this poem as ‘miles to go before I sleep’, an adapted title (original – Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening). I think we all have those early people we learned about, people our teachers loved and passed on to us. I like to dive into them. It’s good to remember poetry that moved us at one time or another in our lives. And to think about poetry as connected to memories, much the way music is. I have seen many of my fellow bloggers quoting the entire poem. I wish to do more. We are all perhaps aware of this poem, but not about its author. Let me try to throw some light on Robert Frost himself.

Robert Frost was an American poet who lived from March 26, 1874, to January 29, 1963. He was born in San Francisco, made his way to Massachusetts via Harvard, and finally settled in New Hampshire. The Robert Frost Farm in Derry was home to Robert Frost from 1900-1911. In October of 1900, he settled on the Derry farm in New Hampshire, just over the Massachusetts line, purchased for him by his grandfather. But from 1915 to 1920, it was The Frost Place, in Franconia, New Hampshire where he and his family lived full-time, and went on to spend nineteen summers.

Frost received four Pulitzer Prizes, in 1924, 1931, 1937, and 1943. He lived a long life, and his poems are often recited and remembered by heart. The Road Not Taken, one of his most famous poems, was published in 1916 in his collection Mountain Interval. A glance at the new years day entry on my diary led me to go back and read Frost again, to revisit his life. So it is Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, published in 1923 in his New Hampshire volume, that I am choosing to post.

My favourite research find was a 1960 interview with Robert Frost by Richard Poirier in The Paris Review. The interview took place in Frost’s home in Cambridge, Massachusetts near the end of his life. He was wearing plaid slippers and was seated in a blue overstuffed chair (with no arms) where he often sat to write. He never had a writing table, a desk, or a writing room. He wrote on a writing board, or the sole of his shoe.

Now, that’s where Frost and I part our ways. Though I often write in coffee shops on the back of a crumpled Post-It (just ask my mom how many sheets of poetry she has found from my desk ), or in a pocket notebook at a sunken spot near the living room window — I still long for a writing room. A comfortable desk, floor to ceiling bookshelves to display my personal book collection, a room of my own.

Robert Frost wrote Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening in June, 1922 at his house in South Shaftsbury, Vermont (now home to the Robert Frost Stone House Museum). He lived in the Stone House from 1920 to 1929 (there is an excellent chronology with photographs at The Friends of Frost). It is said that Frost had been up the entire night writing the long poem New Hampshire, and had finally finished when he realized morning had come. When he went out to view the sunrise, Stopping By Woods came to him like a hallucination.

Sometimes writing comes like that. You hear songwriters talk about flashes of inspiration, or dream sequences where whole songs write themselves, and the next morning flow magically from their pens. My second favourite research find was an audio version of Robert Frost reciting, Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening. You can listen to it at Salon Audio - Robert Frost.

Robert Frost is one of the classical poets — traditional enough to capture those who have been around awhile; detailed enough to lead us across that bend in the woods; wide enough that anyone can find a small opening.

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.

I wouldn’t choose him as one of my favourite writers of all time. It’s just that he has a place in my childhood memories about learning of writers and poets. And so he has a place in the heart. When I did this post, I read the poem with my eyes many times as I was posting it. But when I actually read it out loud a few times, it came to life - I loved it all over again.