The trouble with Robert Frost is that I love SO MANY of his poems! It's hard to just pick four to share with you this week. I finally settled on "Dust of Snow" for the last one because it makes me smile. You can
read it online here.
Discussion Questions:
1. Analyze this poem! It's short, but I think you can pull some real meaning out of it.
1. Watch me trying to pull real meaning out of something 😅 A crow shaking snow down on him made his day brighter, even though he'd been dreading it. It was only part of his day that was 'saved', but that was better than having a bad day the whole way through. (Who doesn't like having a dust of snow dropped on their head?) Sun reflecting off snow is bright, so since I'm trying to pull real meaning out of this I'm going to say that the brightness might correlate with the brightening of part of the narrator's day.
ReplyDeleteYes, those are valid! The part of the day behind him that had gone badly can't be saved, but the fact that he is smiling now means the next part could be salvageable. (Is it because snow is wet, and putting crabby people in water makes them calm down?!? Or just because it was the sort of thing that you can either get mad over or just laugh off, and his choosing to find this funny helps him improve his mood and day?)
DeleteA crow shook snow from a Hemlock tree down on his head. His day thus far had apparently kind of stunk. This just happened, and it made such an impression on him, that he remembered it, and even bothered to write a poem about it. Reading this poem without trying to dig deeper into it at all, it kind of just seems like your average whimsical poem about nature. But only kind of. Even reading it very unintrospectively (yes I know that's not a word 😅), though, it still somehow rings different from just a "nature" poem. I think this is because it's not just a poem talking just about nature, or even how nature affects you, although it is to some extent, but what I mean is, it's describing something HAPPEN in nature. Something random HAPPENED. And this just made his day, apparently. Maybe it was humbling to him. Like the fact that he was so upset about whatever, and yet snow still fell on his head because some cocky crow landed on a branch. Or maybe he just likes it when snow falls on him. I like it when (a little) snow falls on me. Maybe it reminded him of how many good things God showers on us from heaven. Perhaps the wet snow woke him from a reverie, and something that he otherwise would have not even thought to remember, he all of a sudden remembers, because his bad day accentuated the simplicity and commonplaceness (boy, I am full of fake words today 😂) of some random thing like that, and made it forever memorable.
ReplyDeleteYes! Having a crow drop snow on you could be a reason to be crabby and have an even worse day, but you could also see it as funny or enjoyable (I also like it when snow drops on me from trees because it's so random and makes me jump a little and then laugh). I think this whole poem is about how you can change your perspective, even your mood, but how you choose to react to something that happens outside your control.
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