So already, I first met Margaret Atwood's poem "Shapechangers in Winter" last year around the time of the winter solstice, and I actually wrote about it in a blog I posted on New Year's Eve day 2021.
I thought of that poem today as I listened to the Broad Cove Chorale, the Hingham-based women's choral group I sang with before the COVID19 pandemic. Among the pieces they sang in their holiday concert were musical settings of poems by Christina Rossetti, William Blake, and Robert Lowell.
Thinking of all of these poems reminded me that last December, I wrote a poem in gratitude to three winter poets: Margaret Atwood, Wallace Stevens, and Robert Frost.
The image* that most inspired it was that of the vanished house in the third section of Atwood's poem. Musing on it, I had recalled Wallace Stevens' poem "The Snow Man," which added to the haunting idea and image collection I was beginning to build.
Sensing a need to pin my gathering impressions and ideas to something familiar, something already in my bones, I thought of a Robert Frost poem that I think you'll be able to identify without my revealing its name. It's one of those "great American poems" that so many of us encountered as middle school or high school students learning to read and hopefully love poetry. It may be the poem's meter and rhyme scheme that most help you identify the Frost poem, so let its music wash over you or carry you.
* Adjacent photo is a screenshot of Pixneo photo:https://pixnio.com/nature-landscapes/winter/forest-snow-winter-wood-tree-frost-cold-landscape-branch
Dr Soble, hello! My name is Thomas DeFreitas (Jenny's cousin!). I thoroughly enjoyed this response to Frost's "Stopping by Woods"; your command of meter is impeccable, the idiom fluent, the whole poem a joy. Peace and light.
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