Talk:The Road Not Taken

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The Road Not Taken is part of WikiProject Poetry, a WikiProject related to Poetry.
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[edit] Full Text

Considering that a link to the poem in the proper place, Wikisource, is already in the article, I do not believe the text of the poem should be written. I am removing it (again) unless someone has some compelling reason for me to replace it. Nrbelex (talk) 21:06, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

I see where you may be coming from, considering that i recently dealt with this on the UN Declaration of Human Rights page, however I feel that the full text should stay. The poem is rather short and having it right there allows for us to speak of itnerpretations of the poem with the reader being able to immediately check against the poem itself. (Oh, and I gave this a talk category) Sir Elderberry 16:02, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Sir Elderberry. The article is much weaker without the text of the poem, and especially if any further information about it gets added later, when having the text as reference will be very useful. I want the text back. Djr36 21:12, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Could someone post a precedent here, cause I support posting the full text. Nick1000 04:30, 10 May 2007 (UTC)


The Unknown Citizen heres a precedent Warfwar3 18:34, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I have put it back. Fire & Ice have the full test there. --Ahkat (talk) 07:26, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Autobiographical Section

Why is there an autobiographical section? If it offered some central information such as that Frost's family was mostly agrarian but he chose to become a poet, then it would be useful. As it stands, it is a repeat of the page on Robert Frost

It is not the factthat the poem reflects Frost's profession, but the influnce within his profession, in which he uses the old verse forms instead of following the way of that time which was to experiment with new verse forms.--May the Force be with you! Shreshth91($ |-| r 3 $ |-| t |-|) 10:41, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps it should be merged with the section below. It just seems that the biographical section does not clearly draw the connection between aspects of his life and this particular poem. Maybe as a subtitle in the Interpretation section, there could be a little bit about his life and how it influenced his poetry and this in particular.

[edit] Is it less traveled?

The speaker only claims that it was the path less traveled in the fourth stanza, when he is looking back upon his choice. In the second stanza the speaker decides that "the passing there/Had worn them really about the same", or that there was no path less traveled. Perhaps the speaker likes to think that he has taken the path less traveled when really, he is just a guy who can't make up his mind. I will not make any changes to the page as I am not ignorant enough to pretend that my opinion is the only one that matters yet it may be a good idea not to make any kind of attempt of explicating the poem. The Road Not Taken is far more complicated than many think and perhaps Wikipedia should offer just the concrete facts and no opinions in their pages. I am not at all an expert on poetry explication, so if you are, please share your ideas as they would be very helpful.

~Owen

What he means by it is that though one path is less travelled, neither path has been used recently, so the leaves have fallen equally on both sides and nobody's steps have disturbed them. That is why they look equal to him that morning when he passes there.--May the Force be with you! Shreshth91($ |-| r 3 $ |-| t |-|) 10:48, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
While the writer of the explication makes a very compelling point, the writer's tone is unbalanced and should probably not be offerred unless he or she can offer an equally compelling argument to the contrary. This explication is far less encyclopedaic than it is editorial.

Rob 04:06, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What If?

What if Widipedia asked experts to write their ideas and then put them all in, under an opinion section or somthing. That way we could know what was fact and what was just an idea. --216.170.244.103 02:03, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't follow the logic that adding ideas to the page would help its readers distinguish facts from ideas, but generally I agree that this page in particular would benefit from sources that explicate this poem. -- thither 03:20, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


What is endlessly interesting to me is that the word "ALAS" is actually in the last couplet - so it is NOT a happy poem. I don't know how or where, but somehow this very obviously UNHAPPY word has been removed from the text in every online reference I have seen. I know - I studied this ad nauseum in undergrad. That is why the poem is called THE ROAD NOT TAKEN, and the speaker says, with a sigh, "ALAS": he's NOT happy about his choice of roads. I think it is rather funny how this has become misconstrued as a work of contentment.

[edit] Lyrics

Are we allowed to have lyrics here? I asked elsewhere, and it was suggested that we cannot put lyrics on the site because of copyright violations.--Vercalos 05:30, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Lyrics are the words in a song. This is a poem. Also, since this poem was published before 1923 it is in the public domain, so there is no copyright violation. --Carlos 23:31, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Meaning

I removed this from the main article:

-- I must take issue with the last opinion statement just above this. I feel that by definition, a true Poet is taking the "road less traveled". Much of what comes to pass as Modern Poetry is written by brave youths in angst of some precieved slight. However real or not this slight may be, their words will carry both more and less weight for the both the writer and the reader long after said youth has shed the quill along with his/her childhood to follow other potentials. However, the true Poet, gives his life to a craft, and a world, that is rarely grateful within his lifetime and is more often thereafter forgotten entirely. This is frequently done to express a personal view that is often misinterpreted or overlooked by "more learned" genteel laypersons. However, a true Poet is willing to endure such for the love of the Craft and the Art. This act is rarely within the scope of the average person's vision and desires. However, this by no means guarantees the words or meaning of their life's toil are good, or even plausibe. But, by these very facts do they follow a "road less traveled". To think less of it is to become less while thinking yourself more. ssandefur -- opinion, ex parte.

-- In addition, that he told it "with a sigh" by no means necessitates that he was lying. He very easily could have been and, it seems, was, implying that any choice leads "on to way", and no matter what, when one looks back one always regrets the road not taken, or at least the possibility of it.

I believe he is talking about the difficult decision he had to make about moving to England short after his son, mother and one day old baby girl died. It was difficult and costly to go across the atlantic during this time, but it was a good thing he did the difficult thing because Frost was discovered as a poet while he was in England. So i guess he would say it with a "sigh" because in the end it was the death of three people who were very close to him that died for him to want a chance to start over in life and move to England.

[edit] Two sets of explanations

The article has two sets of explanations. Shouldn't we converge them into one ?

--Mahendra 03:49, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removed Random Edit

I've removed this 'random edit':"I hate my wife" from the Explanation. Hopefully no objections... Snowonster 00:53, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Removed still more vandalism from this user: "(she sucks)" Snowonster 01:03, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

What awards did this win?!!

Robert Frost won 4 Pulitzer Prizes. If I am not mistaken, The Road Not Taken was in Mountain Internal which was his thrid publication in 1916. He's first Pulitzer Prize wasn't untill 1923 for his fourth publication the New Hampshire Collection.

[edit] Awkward sentence?

"Some believe readers must acknowledge" is, in my opinion, an awkward statement. Any ideas for improvement?

[edit] "What This Poem Really Means"

I believe the final paragraph to the article is out of place, as it is a personal interpretation of the poem (one I strongly disagree with) presented as its true meaning. It also uses informal voice (second person singular) and is just generally poorly-written. I do think that, considering the nature of poetry, all interpretations should have some mention, however this particular entry simply doesn't match the rest of the article. I've just created my wikipedia account, so I'm a bit weary over making any immediate edits right off the bat. In any case, does anyone agree? LbCyber 08:59, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree, it's just a personal point of view and should be taken out. WorkerBee 13:31, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This poem amazing

It unites with the people of America. The road less traveled by is the correct road to take of meaning and so on. I love this poem!!

[edit] Dude, wheres the poem

well, if its a poem, we should have it, no use explaining something if we dont know what it is.Blacksmith2 talk 09:32, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Interpretations of the poem

The narrator is NOT saying he took the road less traveled and that that has made all the difference. He is saying that that is how he will tell the story "somewhere ages and ages hence." Not all interpretations are valid, especially if they are based on misreadings of the text. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.237.239.122 (talk) 21:38, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Where is Frost when you need him.24.188.68.134 (talk) 01:12, 29 November 2007 (UTC) Stoical Iceman

I agree that the article is biased and generally inaccurate. There is a letter a girlfriend once gave me that explained the poem- it was Frost writing to Thomas after having moved back to America. Does anyone know where that is? And is there a reason you cannot have the text here? Copyright? This should be fair use. BondAndFree (talk) 01:50, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Frost said of the poem "I wasn't thinking about myself there, but about a friend who had gone off to war, a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn't go the other. He was hard on himself that way." Kap42 (talk) 23:11, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

See the SparkNotes page for the poem and you will see a careful explication backed up by references to the text. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.202.38.102 (talk) 14:27, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Details...Details...Details...

This section lacks details. and its gay...It needs more than just its explanation.

This is the questions that needs to be answered and included in the main article:

What is its poetic form, poetic diction, meter and all the elements of poetry?

You should add this to the article because these details are important especially if you have to write an essay. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Triadwarfare (talk • contribs) 15:22, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Alternative explanation

There's a conventional reading of this poem--basically, that choosing the less-traveled path will make all the difference--and then there's another reading that sees the conclusion of the poem as ironic, with Frost actually saying that our choices our largely random and meaningless and the sense of choice a story that we tell ourselves afterwards. A good explication of this second reading is given in Harper's Magazine, August 2000, "Death of the Hired Poem," by John Jeremiah Sullivan. I don't have access to the full text of the article, otherwise I'd put in a reference.

Nareek (talk) 12:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)