"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost begins with admiration of the beautiful and tranquil woods. As the poems continues, it becomes clear that it is man, traveler on a horse drawn carriage stopping to see the beautiful woods. As the poem goes on there is a major change and the poem goes from calm and pleasant to rushed and ick. The man says that he must go because he had duties and obligations to do before he can rest. The second poem is "The Elk" by Hugh McNamar. At the start of a poem, a family enters their cabin to find that it has recently been used. The place is trashed with cans in corners and the fence has been vandalized. The family goes out to the back porch to find a dead animal hanging, twisting from a rafter. This animal has not been bled not gutted and the family is upset and disgusted. There is an overall creepy feeling. When the family returns later in the summer and in their inability to sleep, they hear the creaking of the Elk on the rafter. This poem makes the reader feel disconcerted and creepy. Two poems, the first, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", calm serene, someplace you want to be; in sharp contrast to the second, "The Elk" which is spooky, haunted, the kind of poem that sends chills up your spine.
In "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" the opening sentence is inverted, "Whose woods these are I think I know." (1) From the first words the reader is forced to pay close attention in order to follow the poem. The sentences are all declarative, all facts. The reader must think, what bells are reading, how does this man know so much. This poem has four groups of four lines, for a total of sixteen. The poem has a little over one hundred words. "The Elk" begins with a bold declarative sentence "In winter the poachers had used the cabin."(1) A reader does not have to think about that it hits the reader the minute they see it.
