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Robert Frost. Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, but his family moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1884 following his father’s death. The move was actually a return, for Frost’s ancestors were originally New Englanders, and Frost became famous for his poetry’s engagement with New England locales, identities, and themes.
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Aug 18, 2016 · FROST TO LEONIDAS W. PAYNE JR., November 1, 1927. * * * *. “The Road Not Taken” has confused audiences literally from the beginning. In the spring of 1915, Frost sent an envelope to Edward Thomas that contained only one item: a draft of “The Road Not Taken,” under the title “Two Roads.”. According to Lawrance Thompson, Frost had ...
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The Road Not Taken begins with a dilemma, as many fairytales do. Out walking, the speaker comes to a fork in the road and has to decide which path to follow:
In his description of the trees, Frost uses one detailthe yellow leavesand makes it emblematic of the entire forest. Defining the wood with one feature prefigures one of the essential ideas of the poem: the insistence that a single decision can transform a life. The yellow leaves suggest that the poem is set in autumn, perhaps in a section of woods...
The speaker briefly imagines staving off choice, wishing he could travel both / And be one traveler. (A fastidious editor might flag the repetition of travel/traveler here, but it underscores the fantasy of unitytraveling two paths at once without dividing or changing the self.) The syntax of the first stanza also mirrors this desire for simultanei...
After peering down one road as far as he can see, the speaker chooses to take the other one, which he describes as
Frost then reiterates that the two roads are comparable, observingthis timethat the roads are equally untraveled, carpeted in newly fallen yellow leaves:
As the tone becomes increasingly dramatic, it also turns playful and whimsical. Oh, I kept the first for another day! sounds like something sighed in a parlor drama, comic partly because it is more dramatic than the occasion merits: after all, the choice at hand is not terribly important. Whichever road he chooses, the speaker, will, presumably, en...
The Road Not Taken appears as a preface to Frosts Mountain Interval, which was published in 1916 when Europe was engulfed in World War I; the United States would enter the war a year later. Thomass Roads evokes the legions of men who will return to the roads they left only as imagined ghosts:
Frost was disappointed that the joke fell flat and wrote back, insisting that the sigh at the end of the poem was a mock sigh, hypo-critical for the fun of the thing. The joke rankled; Thomas was hurt by this characterization of what he saw as a personal weaknesshis indecisiveness, which partly sprang from his paralyzing depression. Thomas prescien...
The last stanzastripped of the poems earlier insistence that the roads are really about the samehas been hailed as a clarion call to venture off the beaten path and blaze a new trail. Frosts lines have often been read as a celebration of individualism, an illustration of Emersons claim that Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. In the film...
Again, the language is stylized, archaic, and reminiscent of fairytales. Frost claims he will be telling the story somewhere ages and ages hence, a reversal of the fairytale beginning, Long, long ago in a faraway land. Through its progression, the poem suggests that our power to shape events comes not from choices made in the material worldin an au...
The fairytale-like language also accentuates the way the poem slowly launches into a conjuring trick. Frost liked to warn listeners (and readers) that you have to be careful of that one; its a tricky poemvery tricky. Part of its trick is that it enacts what it has previously claimed is impossible: the traveling of two roads at once.
And, indeed, the title of the poem hovers over it like a ghost: The Road Not Taken. According to the title, this poem is about absence. It is about what the poem never mentions: the choice the speaker did not make, which still haunts him. Again, however, Frost refuses to allow the title to have a single meaning: The Road Not Taken also evokes the r...
The poem moves from a fantasy of staving off choice to a statement of division. The reader cannot discern whether the difference evoked in the last line is glorious or disappointingor neither. What is clear is that the act of choosing creates division and thwarts dreams of simultaneity. All the difference that has arisenthe loss of unityhas come fr...
Apr 2, 2014 · Robert Frost was an American poet who depicted realistic New England life through language and situations familiar to the common man. He won four Pulitzer Prizes for his work and spoke at John F ...
Oct 22, 2024 · Robert Frost’s most famous poems include “The Gift Outright,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Birches,” “Mending Wall,” “The Road Not Taken,” and “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”. Robert Frost (born March 26, 1874, San Francisco, California, U.S.—died January 29, 1963, Boston, Massachusetts) was an American poet who ...
- Robert Frost was born in 1874, and he died in 1963 at the age of 88.
- Elliott was born in 1896 and died of cholera in 1900. Lesley lived 1899–1983. Carol was born in 1902 and committed suicide in 1940. Irma lived 1903...
- Robert Frost was known for his depictions of rural New England life, his grasp of colloquial speech, and his poetry about ordinary people in everyd...
- Robert Frost’s most famous poems included “The Gift Outright,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Birches,” “Mending Wall,” “The Road Not Tak...
May 3, 2020 · The poem was published in 1923, first of all in the Yale Review and then, later the same year, in Frost’s poetry collection New Hampshire. You can read ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’ here before proceeding to our analysis below. Summary. First, a brief summary of the poem. In just eight lines, Robert Frost (1874-1963) offers a fairly ...
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Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in Boston on January 29, 1963. Robert Frost - One of the most celebrated figures in American poetry, Robert Frost was the author of numerous poetry collections, including New Hampshire (Henry Holt and Company, 1923). Born in San Francisco in 1874, he lived and ...
