The road not taken

The finest American poet of the 20th century is thought to have been Robert Frost. In California's San Francisco in 1874, Robert Frost was born. His mother was a teacher and a Scottish immigrant, while his father was a newspaper editor (a job Frost eventually held, among others). His family relocated to Massachusetts when he was around ten years old in order to be close to his grandfather, who had a sawmill. In his high school graduation class, Frost was elected both valedictorian and "class poet"; two years later, the New York Independent journal published his first poem, "My Butterfly: An Elegy." The British poet Edward Thomas, with whom he had a close friendship, and he frequently went for walks together. In Frost’s words, Thomas was “a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn’t go the other way“.

Thomas was "a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn't travel the other way," in the words of Frost. One of Robert Frost's most well-known poems, "The Road Not Taken," was written in 1915 in England. It is recognized across the world. Although the poem is frequently read as a celebration of tough independence, it actually has a variety of meanings. When given a choice between two routes in the poem, the speaker chooses the "less traveled" route, which they believe "made all the difference." However, Frost leaves enough room for interpretation in the poem to make it difficult to determine if the speaker is making a straightforward but significant decision or whether the speaker's judgment should be taken at face value or about how the speaker interprets a choice whose impact is unclear.

Poet: Robert Frost
Published: 1916