Your ideas on this famous poem

[mazHur]

Har har iron eye iron aye Mr / Mrs mazHur good try good try

Sat Sri Akaal
Kali Billi ko
Kuwayn mein daal!!lol

[YesNo]

Hi YesNo. I wasn't clear. I think Kilgore overstates it, but for me the sorry he couldn't take two paths adds an air of lamentation to it. I should have explained what I meant.

There may be lamentation in the word or just a mild regret. I don't think that word as much as the word "road" contains multiple meanings. The road is initially a fork in a hiker's trail, but can at the end of the poem be seen as a career decision or any other choice that the narrator may have made changing him afterwards.

What I find amazing about the poem is the very successful last line about that small decision making all the difference. How could such a minor choice of choosing one path make that much difference or stand out many years later? Then one thinks of "road" in that larger context and the poem "trips the reader head foremost into the boundless" as Frost described the process in "Selected Letters of Robert Frost" (page 344). (I found the quote in Robert Faggen's "The Cambridge Introduction to Robert Frost".)

Compare this with William Carlos William's "The Red Wheelbarrow" which claims that "so much depends upon" those chickens, rain and wheelbarrow. Obviously, nothing depends on them. Does that poem trip readers into the boundless or annoy them by its puzzles? That poem is not "misunderstood" by readers, so much as rejected by them. A misunderstanding assumes that the reader likes the poem enough to offer an interpretation.

[Lykren]

It's neither obvious nor true that 'nothing depends on them.' There are several senses in which there are things that depend on the chickens and wheelbarrow and rain. Of course a farmer needs the wheelbarrow and chickens and rain for his or her livelihood.

From there it's no 'puzzle' to see other ways in which those objects are important. For instance, we depend on the familiarity of the sights around us for comfort. That simple reading does not represent an overly-intellectual challenge, instead it relies on a fairly straightforward emotional reaction. After that there are numerous ways to proceed in one's reading of the poem, assuming one is still engaged by the rhythm and balance of it. You could think about the perspective of the poem, the way there is no you or I, no mention of any particular place, so that it assumes a certain broadness that intriguingly contrasts with the vivid specificity of the description. And so on.

You're free to dislike the poem, obviously. But saying that the poem is not misunderstood by its readers, because a misunderstanding first requires enjoyment, is tantamount to saying that no one enjoys the poem. Why would you feel the need to so impose your personal preferences on the rest of us? I don't understand. I for one am moved and entertained by the poem, and I think it is rather rude to dismiss the possibility of that reaction.

[YesNo]

I agree, Lykren, that to a poor farmer, the chickens, rain and that wheelbarrow might be important. However, that poor farmer is not part of the poem, but a sentimental addition to the poem offered by admirers of the poem to generate empathy and acceptance of the poem. In Frost's poem, nothing needs to be added to reach the brilliance of the last stanza.

The idea that people generally misunderstand Frost's poem is false. There is little in the poem to misunderstand. One can add various interpretations to the poem and I found Calidore's interpretation that references the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz enjoyable. Kilgore's interpretation, on the other hand, seemed mean spirited. The whole idea that the poem is misunderstood is mean spirited. It attempts to belittle the reader for enjoying a truly great poem and may even be an attempt to disparage the poem itself.

It is possible to misunderstand a poem especially if the poet is trying to be deceptive or to manipulate the reader, that is, giving the reader one idea but intending something else. However, I don't think Frost was doing that although my only information about him comes from the brief summary of his life in Robert Faggen's introduction to him.

[Eiseabhal]

Ambiguity by accident is usually bad but deliberate ambiguity may be a strength. if Frost knew definitely all the ways in which a decision makes a difference he would have a god-like omniscience not given to human beings. There are readers who look for certainties from their writers but it is normal to be sometimes riven by doubt about things as small as whether to roll our trouser legs up, not only the bigger issues. If the poem appears to admit of different interpretations that may mean some of the interpretations are off-kilter but it may mean that Frost intended it thus. Readers who want only crystal clear statements would be more at home with a telephone directory than even the nuances of a dictionary and would be non-plussed by following even the simplest cookery book only to find that the results are not as imagined.

[YesNo]

I don't think one can save Williams' poem based on arguments of ambiguity. Consider the following ambiguous poem:

so much depends upon
this
that
something else

Add in whatever sentiment you want and then interpret the poem. I prefer poems that have enough in them already that the remaining ambiguity "trips the reader head foremost into the boundless" as Frost described what he wants to achieve.

"The Red Wheelbarrow" reminds me of a three-card tarot spread. In the tarot spread, we at least have real images to look at to prompt our subconscious to give us intuitive insight.

[ennison]

I think it was Frost that was being defended. The other poem is just drivel.

[Ecurb]

LitNet posters may wonder about differing interpretations of "The Road Not Taken". Perhaps, however, we can agree that all roads lead to poem.

[Pompey Bum]

LitNet posters may wonder differing interpretations of "The Road Not Taken". Perhaps, however, we can agree that all roads lead to poem.

As opposed to all tao, which lead to om.

[Paulclem]

I like The Red Wheelbarrow and its simplicity upon which William's modernist ideas seem to rest -( I just read that in a Guardian article that I was unable to copy to this page).

I like The Road Less Taken for similar reasons - evocative, simple, but containing a recognised but significant memory which has repercussions.

[Lykren]

I don't think one can save Williams' poem based on arguments of ambiguity. Consider the following ambiguous poem:

so much depends upon
this
that
something else

Add in whatever sentiment you want and then interpret the poem. I prefer poems that have enough in them already that the remaining ambiguity "trips the reader head foremost into the boundless" as Frost described what he wants to achieve.

Your notion that Williams' poem needs saving is foolish and naive. Many readers better versed in literature than either of us have found much to be admired in the poem, not to mention the leagues of amateur readers who have also gained pleasure from it. The poem has lasted longer, of course, than your re-writing of it will. But judging from many of your previous posts, I am willing to bet that you think those readers are pretentious, deluded blowhards merely claiming to enjoy the poem for the sake of an illusory cultural cachet.

If I'm wrong about what you believe (and when someone guesses what someone else thinks, error is usually the result), let me know. Let's continue this discussion.

[mona amon]

The idea that people generally misunderstand Frost's poem is false. There is little in the poem to misunderstand. One can add various interpretations to the poem and I found Calidore's interpretation that references the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz enjoyable. Kilgore's interpretation, on the other hand, seemed mean spirited. The whole idea that the poem is misunderstood is mean spirited. It attempts to belittle the reader for enjoying a truly great poem and may even be an attempt to disparage the poem itself.

It is possible to misunderstand a poem especially if the poet is trying to be deceptive or to manipulate the reader, that is, giving the reader one idea but intending something else. However, I don't think Frost was doing that although my only information about him comes from the brief summary of his life in Robert Faggen's introduction to him.

The "Marlboro-man vision of heroic selfhood" is clearly and demonstrably a misunderstanding, since there is not a line in the poem to support it. However, Kilgore's attitude is rather uppity and he's obviously having fun taking down those students and teachers who have this misconception about the poem, so that makes me wonder if his bias isn't making him represent the poem as more misunderstood than it actually is. Now we never had this poem in school, for us it was always "the woods are lovely dark and deep" one, and although to me it seems easy enough to get the gist of this poem, I also know that the idea of taking the road less travelled has sunk into our cultural consciousness as one of the "right answers", like World Peace, and could lead to misinterpretation.

So my question is, is this poem really as widely misinterpreted as Kilgore claims?

[YesNo]

I would think it should be very difficult to misunderstand Frost's poem, but I have to admit that there are people, like Kilgore, who do misunderstand it.

[mona amon]

To be fair, Kilgore seems to be on the right track with his interpretations. We may not agree with each and every shade of meaning, but I do not feel he's come up with anything completely contradictory to what is expressed in the text of the poem. I just feel that owing to his preconceptions, he may be misjudging the ability of most people to understand the poem.

[YesNo]

Frost likely started the idea that people can't understand this poem. Elaine Barry, Robert Frost, page 12, writes this:

Without a proper attention to the speaking voice of Frost's poems, we may well get his subjects out of perspective. How many of us, for example, first read "The Road Not Taken" as a serious, if wistful, comment on the irrevocable decisions that govern our lives? Frost himself was fond of teasing his readers on their gullibility here ("I bet not one reader in ten knows what 'The Road Not Taken' is about").

Now step back and ask, is this poem not about the irrevocable decisions that govern our lives as seen from the perspective of one person imagining he is looking back on a choice he is about to make?

She continues:

He once declared that the most perceptive question anyone ever raised with regard to the poem was "Why the 'sigh'?" in the line "I shall be telling this with a sigh." The "sigh", of course, helps to characterize the "I," and provides the first hint that the poem is a gentle parody of the kind of person whose life in the present is distorted by nostalgic regrets for the possibilities of the past, who is less concerned for the road taken than for the "road not taken."

Looking back on a past choice there will be regrets or at least wonder about the option not taken and a sense of justification for the one that was taken. I don't think this is peculiar to a personality type that Edward Thomas might have had.

So, I'm confused by what is going on here with saying this poem is misunderstood. Are people saying it because Frost said it first and they are trying to justify what Frost claimed? If most readers misunderstand the poem, what was that misunderstanding? What is it about the poem that we are too stupid to see? A misunderstanding assumes there is a correct understanding. What is it?

I watched Billy Cristal's 700 Mornings last night and he referenced this quote by Yogi Berra, number 15 in this list: http://listverse.com/2011/04/13/25-f...of-yogi-berra/.

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

It reminded me of Frost's poem.