Richard,
I have always loved "The Investment", perhaps because my paternal grandparents embodied the situation to an extent. I inherited her piano (a Steinway upright grand) which, unfortunately, I left behind in the US when I emigrated to Canada. Anyway, I am going off on a tangent... Of course, my earliest poems were my mother's lullabies, then the nursery rhymes, then the prayers and hymns of my parochial school upbringing. I reveled in all of it and my ear was attuned. In early high school I was introduced to Frost, Hardy, Shakespeare, Longfellow, Wordsworth, etc, etc, and I immediately took to Frost. You guessed it. "Stopping by Woods.." I finally was able to purchase a paperback anthology of his more well-known poems (the Untermeyer edition) and memorized many of the poems in it. What I love about Frost, though, and what has had the greatest impact on my own writing, is his use of everyday language and powerful endings. There are too many of his poems I love to say which is a favorite, but "Reluctance" is one of them.
Catherine Chandler
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