Went to work in snow, came home in what amounted to a white out and have done a couple rounds of shoveling to keep up with the plowing.
When I couldn’t find my collection of Robert Frost poems, I indulged myself and got another collection which also had prose by him in it. I found this:
On “Birches”
(Old Knower): The tide of evil rises. Your Ark is sailing and you make me a last-minute allowance of a single plant on board for seed. (It would have to be two if animals, or there would be no seed.) Well, let it be a tree –– Birches. Don’t ask me why at a time of doom and confusion like this. My reasons might be forced and unreal. But if I must defend my choice, I will say I took it for its vocality and its ulteriority.
and then this:
from – On Taking Poetry
Now this little thing you see very simply as I wrote it––night, evening, snowstorm, woods, dark, late, snow falling among the alders, and trees, and with a little poetic exaggeration, you know (to see the woods fill up with snow). Did they fill up? How high? See. You want to know. Don’t ask me. [Laughter] And I’ve been asked such things, you know. [Laughter] I’ve had people say––somebody who ought to know better––quote me as saying in that poem, “the coldest evening of the year.” See. Now that’s getting a thermometer into it. [Laughter] And “The darkest evening of the year” ‘s better––more poetical some way. Never mind why. I don’t know. More foolish. That’s where the foolishness comes in. Got to be a little foolish or a good deal foolish. But then it goes on and says “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” and then if I were reading it for someone else I’d begin to wonder what he’s up to. See. Not what he means but what he’s up to.The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.There are so many things that have happened, too, that way. People have come to me to ask me what were the promises, and I’ve joined in on that. Let them have their say, and I took it my way. I remember telling one committee that came to me about that from a college––committee of students––and I said, promises may be divided into two kinds: those that I myself make for myself and those that my ancestors made for me, known as the social contract [Laughter] Now did I think of that when I wrote it? You know better. I’ve just got to say something. Just take it. [Laughter]
