Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Road Not Taken
– Or Was It?
In Memoriam (Easter, 1915)
The
flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This
Eastertide call into mind the men,
Now
far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have
gathered them and will do never again.
-Edward Thomas
Those of us of a certain age (cough) remember the dim, blue-ish
television images of Robert Frost reciting from memory his short poem “The Gift
Outright” at the inauguration of President Kennedy. Because of the wind and the
glaring winter sunlight Frost could not read the poem he had written for the
occasion and so made a quick save with an older one he knew by heart.
“The Gift Outright” would now be condemned as imperialist,
colonialist, and all the other usual “ist” suspects if anyone read poetry at all,
so it’s safe enough. Indeed, in an arc from Mexico City to Ottawa via Washington
the idea of any North American carrying a book is now as unthinkable as
Odysseus carrying the Winnowing Oar as directed by Tiresius.
But it was not always so. For most of history literature was
poetry; prose was for recording facts and shopping lists. When you read through
what is dismissed as Victorian parlour poetry you can see that although the
sentiments are often mawkish the technical skills of ordinary people in their
letters and notebooks are also very highly developed.
The First World War created such a crisis of culture and
a failure of hope that although well-written work continued for a generation as
a sort of existential brenschluss,
poetry after Frost is often little more than self-pitying, self-referential free
verse that connects only with whether or not the writer’s feelings have been
hurt today or if he (the pronoun is gender-neutral) has had a satisfactory
bowel movement lately.
In 1912-1915 Robert Frost’s metaphorical road took him to
England where he hoped to develop a career as a poet. He became great friends
with the successful travel writer, Edward Thomas, who encouraged him and made
some useful introductions that indeed began making Frost famous.
Frost admired Thomas’ descriptive travel essays and encouraged
him to render some of his work as verse.
In 1915 Frost returned to America and Thomas remained in
England undecided as to whether to follow Frost and continue his career in the
U.S.A. or, at 36, to join the British Army.
When Frost published “The Road Not Taken,” Thomas, thinking the poem a
criticism of his well-known indecision in most matters, enlisted, and was
killed in action in 1917.
Indeed, the poem may have been nothing more than a little
joke based on the fact that Frost and Thomas, who loved hiking, often really
did argue about what trail or road they should take.
As for “The Road Not Taken,” it is very much alive and
the subject of badly-written undergraduate essays beginning with the
ever-useless, “In my opinion…”
An acquaintance reminds me that even a very young reader
understands “The Road Not Taken” on levels, but that an older reader, looking back
upon the decisions he has made in life, truly feels it.
Most of the poems of Frost are as fresh and relevant now
as they were in the last century, and worth a re-read without the unholy
inquisition of some tiresome English teacher asking you what a line means when
it’s darned obvious what the line means.
Just don’t read in public; people will stare at you.
-30-
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