Ted Hughes and the Animal
Ted Hughes and the Animal Kingdom of Muses think of poems, writes the British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes in the preface of his posthumously Collected Poems, "as a sort of animal." (Hughes, v) Most of Hughes poetry,…
The strangeness of nature in three American poets
Three American Poets – The Strangeness of Nature
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening – Robert Frost
Robert Frost's poem – an iconic and very well known poem – can be misunderstood, and is misunderstood in many instances. This is because there is a seeming innocence about the poem. What could be confusing about a poem that seems so tranquil and so linked to the natural world in wintertime? A careful examination of the second stanza can discover there is more meaning than immediately meets the eye, however.
"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."
The poet stops on the "…darkest evening of the year" to watch the woods "fill up with snow," and according to John T. Ogilvie's scholarship, the poet is caught between two worlds, the world of quiet nature and solitude, and the world of "…people and social obligations" (Ogilvie, 1959). Does the lure of his social responsibility have more power than his attraction to the woods? Ironically the world of the woods and snow may be the poet's escape from the village and the society, but a man owns these woods so he isn't really escaping at all.