Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

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"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is a poem written in 1922 by Robert Frost, and published in 1923 in his New Hampshire volume. Imagery and personification are prominent in the work. Frost wrote this poem about winter in June, 1922 at his house in Shaftsbury, Vermont that is now home to the "Robert Frost Stone House Museum." Frost had been up the entire night writing the long poem "New Hampshire" and had finally finished when he realized morning had come. He went out to view the sunrise and suddenly got the idea for "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." He wrote the new poem in just a few minutes and later stated that "It was as if I'd had a hallucination."

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" was Frost's favorite of his own poems and Frost in a letter to Louis Untermeyer called it "my best bid for remembrance."

The poem is written in iambic tetrameter in the Rubaiyat stanza created by Edward Fitzgerald. Each verse (save the last) follows an a-a-b-a rhyming scheme, with the following verse's a's rhyming with that verse's b, which is a chain rhyme. Overall, the rhyme scheme is AABA-BBCB-CCDC-DDDD. There was also a choral piece written for this poem. The piece was written by Eric Whitacre, a contemporary American composer whose other choral works include Lux Aurumque, When David Heard, Winter and others. Due to copyright reasons, the text of the composition was re-written by Charles Antoni Sylvestri to comply with the wishes of the Robert Frost estate.

In the early morning of November 23, 1963, Sid Davis of Westinghouse Broadcasting reported the arrival of President John F. Kennedy's casket to the White House. As Frost was one of the President's favorite poets, Davis concluded his report with a passage from this poem but was overcome with emotion as he signed off.

The poem featured in the 1977 Charles Bronson film "Telefon", also in Roswell (TV series) on episode 17, season 2 and Quentin Tarantino's segment of 2007's "Grindhouse", "Death Proof".

[edit] External links

• University of Toronto Representative poetry online Text of the poem, along with the rhyming pattern
• Discussion and analysis of the poem
• "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" Audio-Text. Read etext and listen to free audio of poem.