Monday, May 20, 2013

The road not taken





What follows are three readings of ‘The road not taken’ by Robert Frost. I would suggest that there are many more simple yet nuanced ways of reading these words. I do not believe that Mr. Frost himself thought that he had once and for all answered the questions he posed in this poem.


In the first reading, I go dark. This is a very somber, real, possibly tragic way to hear these words. In the very end, when I  finally see my baleful eye, I find I must laugh. We may even be dying from the choices we have made, but we must, in the end, not take ourselves too seriously.



In the second reading consider that Paul Simon sang that there are fifty ways to leave your lover. I suggest, possibly with Mr. Frost, that fifty is only the beginning, but he focuses more on a simpler question: should we leave our lover or should we stay. In a sense, the series of photos taken in Lawrence, Kansas asks: this way or another. Will it make a difference?



Finally, here is Robert Frost reading his own poem.



And of course, you can read it out loud to yourself and ask yourself: 
what do you hear in your own reading of these very fine words.


Robert Frost (1874–1963).  Mountain Interval.  1920.

The Road Not Taken



TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


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