Frost, Robert (Lee) - Robert Penn Warren
ROBERT PENN WARREN
A large body of criticism has been written on the poetry of Robert Frost, and we know the labels which have been used: nature poet, New England Yankee, symbolist, humanist, skeptic, synecdochist, anti-Platonist, and many others. These labels have their utility, true or half true as they may be. They point to something in our author. But the important thing about a poet is the kind of poetry he writes. (p. 118)
In any case, I do not want to begin by quarreling with the particular labels. Instead, I want to begin with some poems and try to see how their particular truths are operative within the poems themselves. (p. 119)
As a starting point I am taking one of Frost's best-known and most widely anthologized pieces, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."… It will lead us to the other poems because it represents but one manifestation of an impulse very common in Frost's poetry. (p. 120)
The poem does, in fact, look simple. A...
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