“The Road Not Taken,” while admittedly the most popular of Frost’s work, is not his most misunderstood poem. That honor belongs to “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” which appears to be a Janus-faced coin: on one side is a charming poem about a man caught up in the wonder of an evening snowfall in the woods; on the other is a momento mori poem with, perhaps, a suicide subtext. How do we reconcile the two?
Ann Marie Mikkelsen’s extensive research has yielded a very informative book on the use of pastoral themes in twentieth century poetry. Her prime exhibits are select poems by Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens and John Ashbery, but she also briefly covers works by Gertrude Stein, Lyn Hejinian and Lisa Robertson.
The poem exerts a magnetic attraction, largely due to its lyric intensity and the unpredictable development of its content: from a pastoral setting on Cornell’s campus in Upstate New York (where the “single creek” featured in the poem cuts through the Cascadilla gorge), to the capaciousness of its scientific quantifications of the cosmos and the apparent awe inspired by the poet’s realization of his place in the universal scheme, and finally to the surprising lament at the end of the poem.
Armantrout’s technique is exploratory. She juxtaposes sermingly unrelated ideas and organizes them to evoke surprisingly intellectual and emotional resonances. In contrast to Pound’s imagism, Armantrout’s system of organization dislocates traditional associations in order to expose the fundamental bias of their presumptions.
My essay on Stevens’ “Re-statement of Romance” is now avialable through JSTOR and may be read on-line for free. It’s alsoContinue Reading
Unlike previous interpretations which generally hold that “Emperor” exhorts us to “seize the day” (carpe diem), here the speaker is exorcising his demons in a way that simultaneously captures his abject despair, sarcasm and remorse. This follows the long tradition of the rejected poet who pours verbal abuse on the perfidious amour, his muse. The poem does not merely stand as a lament on the illusive nature of love and life, but bitter commentary on the poet’s status.
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