Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2023

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s poem is by Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963), an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech,[2] Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.

Frequently honored during his lifetime, Frost is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution".[3] He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. On July 22, 1961, Frost was named poet laureate of Vermont.

—Bio via Wikipedia

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:04.2	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023.
0:11.8	Today's poem is by Robert Frost, and it's called The Road Not Taken.
0:19.0	I'll read it once, then offer a few comments and read it one more time.
0:26.1	The road not taken. Two roads diverged in the yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler.
0:37.0	Long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth,
0:43.0	then took the other, as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim,
0:47.9	because it was grassy and wanted where, though as for that the passing there had warned
0:52.3	them really about the same, and both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had troddened black.
0:59.2	Oh, I kept the first for another day.
1:02.0	Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
1:07.4	I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence.
1:13.0	Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
1:30.5	It is the beginning of fall.
1:35.4	That's early October, at least.
1:43.0	If you live anywhere near me in northwest Florida, it doesn't feel like fall just yet.
1:46.2	But the calendar doesn't lie.
1:55.7	We're in the fall months. So perfect time to read this poem about yellow woods. Most Robert Frost poems make it feel like fall or winter. And it's the perfect time of year to ruin some people's favorite poem.
2:10.6	If you love this poem and I steal any of your joy today.
2:18.2	I hope that I can replace it with a deeper joy, a greater joy.
2:21.6	Because I think that this is one of the most misread poems.
2:29.0	As far as popular poems go, I'm sure there are less popular and more difficult poems that are misread all the time. I'm sure I misread plenty of poems. But this is one of the more famous poems that I think is chronically misread. And the normal misreading of this poem, usually, it's usually a high school kind of misreading of this poem,
	...

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