Posted by Holly Ordway in All Nine Muses, Poetry | 2 Comments
Reflecting on Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken
I am delighted to be a regular contributor for Kelly Belmonte’s blog All Nine, where she encourages us to collaborate with all nine of the Muses “to inspire, create, and illuminate.” For this piece, written on the eve of a road trip to move from my old job in Southern California to my new job at Houston Baptist University, I found myself (not surprisingly) reflecting on choices and decisions.
I chose as my poem Robert Frost’s famous, often-anthologized, often-quoted “The Road Not Taken.” This is a great poem, but one reason it is great is that it is not the poem most people take it to be. Frost has something to say about making choices in “The Road Not Taken,” but what he says cannot be summed up in those often-quoted lines.
Read the whole piece – and my contrarian take on it – here at All Nine!
Wonderful post over at All Nine, Holly! A really thought-provoking piece. Gives a new way of looking at this great poem, and a new way of thinking about indecision in light of limited human capacities.
Really enjoyed it.
Thanks, Garret! I think one of the reasons the line gets quoted that way is that it would be so nice if it were that easy: Just find what way everyone is going, and go a different way, and voila! a good life. Of course, that begs the question of where the particular paths are going… It’s interesting to note that the phrase “and that has made all the difference” has a touch of ambiguity about it. It probably means “in a good way” but not necessarily.