Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” Is Our Most Misread Poem. Everyone knows Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”—and almost everyone gets it wrong. Frost in 1913. From The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong, a new book by David Orr. A young man hiking through a forest is abruptly confronted with a fork in the path. He pauses, his hands in his pockets, and looks back and forth between his options.
As he hesitates, images from possible futures flicker past: the young man wading into the ocean, hitchhiking, riding a bus, kissing a beautiful woman, working, laughing, eating, running, weeping. The advertisement I’ve just described ran in New Zealand in 2008. It is, of course, “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. But this isn’t just any poem. The second, more persuasive reason comes from Google. But as everyone knows, poetry itself isn’t especially widely read, so perhaps being the most popular poem is like being the most widely requested salad at a steak house. And almost everyone gets it wrong. British Library-Language & Literature. Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature. The Literature Network.
BrightONLINE student literary journal - University of Brighton - Faculty of Arts. Gothic Literature.