Assignment
Part 1
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening BY ROBERT FROST
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.
Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem.
Source: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays (Library of America, 1995)
What is significant/meaningful about the setting of the poem? What does the horse symbolize, and why does the speaker decide to leave if he likes the snowy woods so much? What is Frost trying to say about life, nature, the modern world, and/or human obligations? Use elements of poetry (imagery, symbolism, form, etc.) to elaborate. Do not look up anything online! I want your analysis from reading the work.
Part 2
The mother Launch Audio in a New Window BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS.
Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.
I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?-
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.
Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.
Gwendolyn Brooks, "the mother" from Selected Poems.
Source: Selected Poems (Harper & Row, 1963)
What is significant/meaningful about the point of view of the speaker and who she addresses throughout the poem? How does the speaker's tone/attitude change throughout the poem, and why is this significant/meaningful? Is there a political angle to this poem? If so, what is it? If not, why not? Use elements of poetry (imagery, symbolism, form, etc.) to elaborate. Do not look up anything online! I want your analysis from reading the work.