Resisting by Woods on a Snowy Evening
In what is arguably the “best known and most widely anthologized” piece written by American poet Robert Frost,[1] “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”[2] tells of a traveler torn between the seductive pull of wildness on one hand and the seemingly inescapable demands of human society on the other.[3] While common interpretations of this timeless work assert that it deals with death or thoughts of suicide,[4] I’d like to propose a new, radical reading of the debated classic.
As a disclaimer, the reading presented below is in no way based on a deep dive into Frost’s biography or his catalogue. My motivation for writing is not to contribute to academic research on Frost. Rather, I was inspired by the resonant words of accomplished Frost scholar Judith Oster, who stated that the reader of “Stopping by Woods” is not meant to “adjudicate, nor to ‘fix’ a meaning, but to allow the poem its openness, its fullest possible range”.[5] My aim, along those lines, is to extend the range of the poem’s possible meanings by offering what is to my knowledge a novel interpretation of it.[6] In doing so, several liberties are taken. First, I present the original poem verbatim. From there, I interpret each of the poem’s four stanzas in a way that forwards my agenda, while only selectively engaging with extant interpretations. Finally, to round out and fully expose my agenda, I put forward what is essentially poetic fanfiction: a second verse for Frost’s classic piece, in which the conflicted rider is revealed as an environmental direct actionist in the tradition of Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang.[7]
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening[8]
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
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.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
An Ecological Resistance Reading of “Stopping by Woods”
The first stanza of Frost’s poem (lines 1–4) introduces two characters: (1) a rider, who is narrating the story; and (2) the owner of a tract of wooded land where the rider has stopped to reflect. The notion that the latter’s “house is in the village” and, thus, he “will not see” the former stopping to admire his land, establishes a contrast. On one side is the rider and their seemingly spiritual affection for the woods. And on the other side is a male owner who sees the woods as real property — as constituents in a wealth portfolio that contribute to private financial or recreational interests but are not available for the enjoyment of or use by others.[9]
In my reading, the rider’s statement that they think they know the identity of the woods’ village-dwelling owner (line 1) refers not to imperfect knowledge about a specific male individual’s land holdings; but to a more general sense that the woods are in fact owned by outside interests. Put differently, the rider expresses an understanding that, in a capitalist economic system, where money, power, and property tend to be highly concentrated in the hands of relatively few elite members of society, the members of that owning or ruling class (especially males) are generally able to buy and sell what they desire — even if their desires are, like untamed woods, products of the Earth that are broadly valued by members of human and non-human communities.
From that perspective, the rider seems to speak to “anthropomorphic heresy or the hubris of possession by [land] owners”.[10] The fundamental image of the poem, then — the act of stopping on the land to “watch [the owner’s] woods fill up with snow” (emphasis added) –becomes an intentional act of insurrection. The rider is fully aware that they are violating society’s property laws and norms. But that violation is the rider’s objective. The insurrection communicates a belief that wild nature — and perhaps land more generally — belongs to no human, and instead exists for the benefit of all species.
In the second stanza (lines 5–8), the rider reveals themself as somewhat of a tactician. Their journeys are typically so well-programmed that their horse can sense something unusual about stopping to admire a wooded landscape. Indeed, that the location of the stop is characterized by both absence of a farmhouse and proximity to a frozen lake affirms that pausing here plays no functional role on the journey. The stop provides neither food nor water nor shelter for rider or horse.[11] Consequently, the third stanza (lines 9–12) sees the horse’s unease manifest physically, as it shakes the bells on its harness to break the peaceful silence that had theretofore shackled the rider to the captivating image of an increasingly snow-filled woods. The sound of the bells is a reminder that the rider’s temporary act of insurrection is keeping the traveling companions from their journey’s purpose.
When the rider receives the horse’s jingling message, the former, in the fourth stanza (lines 13–16) comments on the beauty and mystery of the scene before them (“The woods are lovely, dark and deep”), but vows to uphold their pre-existing commitments (“But I have promises to keep”). In doing so, they suggest that their journey is far from over, for they have “miles to go before” they will sleep. The fact that the rider closes their monologue by repeating twice how they have “miles to go before” they will sleep is plausibly an indicator of the extent and difficulty of the path on which they are traveling. Despite this possibility, though, and despite the rider’s evident enchantment with the dark and deep woods that they stand before, they are compelled (or impelled, it is unclear which is the case) to carry on with their “promises.”
It bears questioning what pre-existing commitments would be powerful enough to draw a tactical, insurrectionary, nature-admiring individual away from the opportunity to further enjoy and revere — if not wholly retreat into — the wildness for which they seem to have such strong affinity. For me, the answer lies in a more active form of insurrection and ecological resistance. Namely, that the passivity and tranquility of loitering and intentionally trespassing in a scenic landscape caused the rider to at least temporarily forget (and maybe even consider abandoning) their plans, hints that a more combative, hawkish lifestyle might await. If so, then the horse’s concern over how long the pair were idling at an inutile location might be an indication that the rider and horse should be moving, because they are always on the move when they are out “keeping their promises.” The rider is, in this interpretation, a monkey-wrencher, in the tradition of Edward Abbey’s cult novel,[12] who moves quickly from site to site, sabotaging human attempts to destroy wildness, under cover of night, fleeing with the help of their equine partner to avoid detection. The rider’s “promises” are to the wild.
With that image in mind, the final section of this essay puts forward some poetic fanfiction — a second verse for Frost’s “Stopping by Woods,” in which the rider reveals to the reader the true nature of their nightwork.[13]
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Part Two
I’ve one more stop atop my list,
Before the dark and snow desist.
For one must do the work of night.
It beckons for my wrench and fist.
I make approach from out of sight
To war machines now draped in white.
With wrench I rend, with gavel pound,
With Wildness calling, “writ of right”.
Away I ride, again woods-bound —
Snow-dulled hoofbeats, the only sound.
Our freedom grows by bound and leap.
Our fires burn for wilder ground.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep —
To them I’ve promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
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Notes
[1] Warren, Robert Penn. “The Themes of Robert Frost.” Michigan Alumnus Quarterly Review 54, no. 10 (1947): 1–11.
[2] Frost, Robert. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” In Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays, edited by Richard Poirier and Mark Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1995.
[3] Gray, Richard. “American poetry of the twentieth century.” M]. New York: Longman Ltd (1990): 131–133.
[4] Ogilvie, John T. “From Woods to Stars: A Pattern of Imagery in Robert Frost’s Poetry.” South Atlantic Quarterly 58, no. 1 (1959).
Poirier, Richard. Robert Frost: The work of knowing: with a new afterword. Vol. 243. Stanford University Press, 1990.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Robert Frost: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
Hass, Robert Bernard. Going by Contraries: Robert Frosts Conflict with Science. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2002.
[5] Oster, Judith. “Frost’s Poetry of Metaphor.” Chapter. In The Cambridge Companion to Robert Frost, edited by Robert Faggen, 155–78. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
[6] For additional re-readings of Frost’s work, see: Wilcox, Earl J., and Jonathan N. Barron, eds. Roads Not Taken: Rereading Robert Frost. University of Missouri Press, 2000.
[7] Abbey, Edward. The Monkey Wrench Gang. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006 [1975].
[8] Frost, “Stopping by Woods”.
[9] Gray, “American poetry of the twentieth century”.
[10] Walcott, Derek. “The Road Taken.” In Brodsky, Joseph, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott (eds.) Homage to Robert Frost. New York: Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 1996
[11] Gray, “American poetry of the twentieth century”.
[12] Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang.
[13] For the significance of the term nightwork, refer to Loeffler, Jack. Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003.
