I have long discerned connections between "The Snow Man" and the work of Robert Frost [pictured left receiving a medal of honor from President John F. Kennedy in 1962], an association that Frost's surname handily suggests. It is incontrovertible that the teaching of Wallace Stevens's great poem "The Snow Man" benefits by concurrent analysis of two of Frost's poems, "Stopping By Woods on a Snow Evening" and "Desert Places."
We associate "the nothing that is" with Stevens; it is the final phrase in "The Snow Man." Here is a line from Frost's long poem "New Hampshire": "Nothing not built with hands of course is sacred." Is the "nothing" here a word that requires the definite article? Consider the double negative. The line paraphrased is "Nothing [with exceptions] is sacred." As "nothing is sacred" is itself a well-worn expression that Frost would not use without a degree of irony, I wonder whether the "Nothing" that opens the line does not denote the absence of everything.
Comments and suggestions from readers are most welcome.– DL