ROBERT FROST [1874-1963], Stopping by Woods on a snowy Evening

ROBERT FROST 

[1874-1963], 

Stopping by Woods on a snowy Evening

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 seep 

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promised to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep. 

THE EVALUATION OF POETRY

When we evaluate a poem, we do two different kinds of things. First, we make a judgement about how good it is and how successfully it realizes its poetic intentions. We examine its language and structure, for example, and consider how well they work together to embody meaning and convey the feeling. Second, we consider how much significance the poem has for us personally, and what significance it may have for other readers - both those who are like us and those who differ in age, race, gender, culture, and ideology. Some poems "speak" to us more than others do, some poems mean to us on some days than on other days;  and some poems mean both more or less to us at different periods of our lives. In evaluating poems, we explore the how and why of such differences. In doing so, we turn inevitably to a consideration of the various cultural assumptions, moral attitudes, and political conviction that animate particular poems. We consider context; the circumstances of a poem's composition, the poet's was written, its publication history and reception by readers past and present. From even this brief list, we can see how complex literary evaluation can be. 

    Does this mean then we cannot make definitive, final, and absolute evaluation of poems? Probably, since change and variety are the hallmarks of literary evaluation. The way we see and understand any poem changes as we change. We will find merit in poems whose meaning we understand and whose values are like our own. We will come to value poems whose content we have lived. And we will appreciate poems in relation to other literary works that have had an impact on our lives and our thinking. 

    With this consideration in mind, we can suggest a few general principles upon which to ground preliminary evaluations. First is the realization that an evaluation is essentially a judgment, a set of opinions about a literary work based on a thoughtful consideration of it. We may agree or disagree with the speaker's response to the woods in frost's "Stopping by Woods," We may confirm or deny the models of experience illustrated in Hayden's "Those Winter Sunday." Invariably, however, we measure the sentiments of a poem against our own.