THE COMMA, AND ROBERT FROST

The Robert Frost Stone House museum

When we traveled through Vermont this fall, I was eager to see the stone house where Robert Frost—one of my favorite poets--lived in the 1920s. The house is now a small museum, with family pictures and enlargements of selections from Frost’s books and letters  covering the walls. Though not as spectacular as some writers’ homes, the museum is a feast for any Frost enthusiast.

One piece of correspondence especially fascinated me. It was Frost’s caustic letter to his editor regarding “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” that poem beloved by thousands of us. The editor had added commas to Frost’s original line, “The woods are lovely dark and deep,”  resulting in the familiar “lovely, dark, and deep” we have all seen in the published poem. Frost was obviously infuriated by the change. As a rather comma-happy editor myself, I could imagine myself automatically adding commas in the same places, and felt some sympathy for the editor. But Frost was right, of course—both the rhythm of the poem and the connotation of the line were changed by the added commas.

Coincidentally, the issue of Harper’s that came out while I visited Frost’s home contained a short story by Joyce Carol Oates, “Lovely, Dark, and Deep.” (It did not mention the commas.) Though clearly fiction, it was a slightly veiled sharp attack on Frost’s character. Using various sources, Oates quoted Frost’s children and associates about how he had mistreated those around him.  It is impossible to tell how much of Oates’s material is true, and how much is fictional. Whether Frost is as awful as he seems in this short story (which may well be true, from what I have read in other places) or not cannot be known with certainty. Because I find much meaning in his poetry, I hope he was a finer person than Oates pictured him.                                       

This lack of clarity troubles me, not just in regard to this story, but about combining fiction and history in general. What might be libelous in a nonfiction article is not in a short story, where the author is protected from accountability.