Caveat emptor: I am not a huge Robert Frost fan. I don’t dislike him. I’ve got a nice volume of his collected poems at home. But that’s more because he is someone you want to have in your library (by the way, check out this article – it talks about how having a physical library is very important for children; a library of one hundred books will give your child a 1.5 year head start in reading comprehension over her/his peers and a five hundred volume library a 2.2 year advantage), not because he’s someone I turn to in certain moments of melancholy or confusion or whatever (that would be Anne Carson, William Wordsworth, Paul Eluard, Shakespeare, and Kenneth Rexroth, among others).

So when I first heard a middle aged couple talking a little too loudly next me near the poetry shelves of the soon to be closing downtown DC Barnes and Noble, trying to decide between editions of Frost, I felt some never to be spoken, but nonetheless curt (if they had ever been spoken) words rise up.

But, it didn’t take more than a moment of thought to realize my mistake. Eavesdropping, some poem by Frost had struck the man forcefully and now he had to have a book of his poetry. Surely this is the goal? What poetry lovers and promoters want to see happen?

I hope you found some more poems in whichever edition you chose, sir.