The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves

The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong

A cultural â€œbiographyâ€ of Robert Frostâ€™s beloved poem, arguably the most popular piece of American literature
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â€œTwo roads diverged in a yellow wood . . .â€ One hundred years after its first publication in August 1915, Robert Frostâ€™s poem â€œThe Road Not Takenâ€ is so ubiquitous that itâ€™s easy to forget that it is, in fact, a poem. Yet poetry it is, and Frostâ€™s immortal lines remain unbelievably popular. And yet in spite of this devotion, almost everyone gets the poem hopelessly wrong.
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David Orrâ€™s The Road Not Taken dives directly into the controversy, illuminating the poemâ€™s enduring greatness while revealing its mystifying contradictions. Widely admired as the poetry columnist for the New York Times Book Review, Orr is the perfect guide for lay readers and experts alike. Orr offers a lively look at the poemâ€™s cultural influence, its artistic complexity, and its historical journey from the margins of the First World War all the way to its canonical place today as a true masterpiece of American literature.
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â€œThe Road Not Takenâ€ seems straightforward: a nameless traveler is faced with a choice: two paths forward, with only one to walk. And everyone remembers the traveler taking â€œthe one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.â€ But for a century readers and critics have fought bitterly over what the poem really says. Is it a paean to triumphant self-assertion, where an individual boldly chooses to live outside conformity? Or a biting commentary on human self-deception, where a person chooses between identical roads and yet later romanticizes the decision as life altering?
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What Orr artfully reveals is that the poem speaks to both of these impulses, and all the possibilities that lie between them. The poem gives us a portrait of choice without making a decision itself. And in this, â€œThe Road Not Takenâ€ is distinctively American, for the United States is the country of choice in all its ambiguous splendor.
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Published for the poemâ€™s centennialâ€”along with a new Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Frostâ€™s poems, edited and introduced by Orr himselfâ€”The Road Not Taken is a treasure for all readers, a triumph of artistic exploration and cultural investigation that sings with its own unforgettably poetic voice.
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Praise for The Road Not Taken:
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â€œThe most satisfying part of Orrâ€™s fresh appraisal of â€˜The Road Not Takenâ€™ is the reappraisal it can inspire in longtime Frost readers whose readings have frozen solid. The crossroads between the poet and the man is where Frost leaves his poems for us to discover, turning what seems like a fork in the road into a site of limitless potential.â€ â€”The Boston Globe
Country USA
Brand Penguin Books
Manufacturer Penguin Books
Binding Paperback
Color Multicolor
ReleaseDate 2016-08-16
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780143109570

Country	USA
Brand	Penguin Books
Manufacturer	Penguin Books
Binding	Paperback
Color	Multicolor
ReleaseDate	2016-08-16
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780143109570

The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong

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