A Frosty Reception for Old People's Poetry

This evening Ian was telling me about a poem that he heard at school today which, for some inexplicable reason,  all the teachers seemed to really like.  He seemed to think it consisted of only four verses, but I got the feeling it might be a bit longer when he added this additional complaint:  that at the end of the poem, the poet apparently couldn't think of a final verse, so he just repeated the previous verse, as follows:

And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep.

This sounded like a familiar pattern, if wholly redundant and prosaic, and I suggested to Ian that this poem that had some bizarre cult following among his teachers might be "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening," composed by a local poet who used to live here in New Hampshire named Robert Frost.

Ian's instant recognition of the title was quickly pre-empted by yet another observation:  that "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" is a terrible name for a poem.  I didn't get a chance to tell Ian that this bit of doggerel was my father's very favorite poem. My father was a high school English teacher, so he had heard a number of poems over the years.  My guess would be that this poem must be something that teachers just like, for no reason that anyone in the real world can really explain. Or more specifically, perhaps teachers in New England.

(May 30, 2014)