Not Taken, Indeed

Normally I'm a fan of close reading. I've found that a methodical approach to a poem -- form, rhyme, sound, literary techniques, all before sense -- yields a rich reward of meanings and resonances. I'd like to think I could "hang in there" with any close reading, no matter how close.

(As an example, I'm listening to a delightful video series about The Lord of the Rings and we have spent literally hours going through a poem, line by line and even word by word, and I'm still as engaged as ever. If you're a LOTR geek, these sessions are highly recommended. I'm fully prepared to spend the rest of my life progressing through this masterwork, a few paragraphs per week, and enjoying every minute.)  

That said, David Orr's The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong could have been a shorter book. There's no question that Robert Frost's poem is a work of genius, depicting choices made and not made, and its subtlety, ambiguity, and contradictions -- Frost loads every word -- deserve close scrutiny. Orr's book, in contrast, seems more like an excellent journal article reaching to be a book. Read this short essay instead and be done with it.  

Excerpt:

You may have assumed, as most people do, that "The Road Not Taken" is a salute to rugged individualism. But this isn't the case: the poem's famous final lines, which assert that taking the road "less traveled by" has made "all the difference," are flatly contradicted by the preceding stanzas, in which it becomes clear that the two roads are, in fact, practically identical . . . .

Note: This book counts toward the Mount TBR Reading Challenge and the Color Coded Reading Challenge.