Mowery has a Ph.D. in literature and composition and has written extensively for the Gale Group. In the following essay he considers the tension that comes from creating an identity for the "Deep Woods."

"Nemerov is a very easy poet to read: you like him immediately. He always gives you something to think about," wrote James Dickey in 1961. Some of Howard Nemerov's earlier poems tended to be more abstract, but the later ones show a shift into what Peter Meinke calls "the simplicity of a highly educated man." These include the poems in the volume The Salt Garden, among them "Deep Woods."

At first the poem is reminiscent of the poetry of the New England poet Robert Frost, especially his "Stopping by a Woods on a Snowy Evening." In that Frost poem, the narrator stops in a quiet woods and watches the "woods fill up with...