A cultural "biography" of Robert Frost's beloved poem, arguably the
most popular piece of American literature
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood . . ." One hundred years after
its first publication in August 1915, Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not
Taken" is so ubiquitous that it's easy to forget that it is, in fact, a
poem. Yet poetry it is, and Frost's immortal lines remain unbelievably
popular. And yet in spite of this devotion, almost everyone gets the
poem hopelessly wrong.
David Orr's The Road Not Taken dives directly into the controversy,
illuminating the poem's enduring greatness while revealing its
mystifying contradictions. Widely admired as the poetry columnist for
the New York Times Book Review, Orr is the perfect guide for lay
readers and experts alike. Orr offers a lively look at the poem's
cultural influence, its artistic complexity, and its historical journey
from the margins of the First World War all the way to its canonical
place today as a true masterpiece of American literature.
"The Road Not Taken" seems straightforward: a nameless traveler is faced
with a choice: two paths forward, with only one to walk. And everyone
remembers the traveler taking "the one less traveled by, / And that has
made all the difference." But for a century readers and critics have
fought bitterly over what the poem really says. Is it a paean to
triumphant self-assertion, where an individual boldly chooses to live
outside conformity? Or a biting commentary on human self-deception,
where a person chooses between identical roads and yet later
romanticizes the decision as life altering?
What Orr artfully reveals is that the poem speaks to both of these
impulses, and all the possibilities that lie between them. The poem
gives us a portrait of choice without making a decision itself. And in
this, "The Road Not Taken" is distinctively American, for the United
States is the country of choice in all its ambiguous splendor.
Published for the poem's centennial--along with a new Penguin Classics
Deluxe Edition of Frost's poems, edited and introduced by Orr
himself--The Road Not Taken is a treasure for all readers, a triumph
of artistic exploration and cultural investigation that sings with its
own unforgettably poetic voice.
Praise for The Road Not Taken
"The most satisfying part of Orr's fresh appraisal of 'The Road Not
Taken' is the reappraisal it can inspire in longtime Frost readers whose
readings have frozen solid. The crossroads between the poet and the man
is where Frost leaves his poems for us to discover, turning what seems
like a fork in the road into a site of limitless potential." --The
Boston Globe
