
The Most Misread Poem in America - dnetesn
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/09/11/the-most-misread-poem-in-america/
======
creeble
David Orr did a talk on NPR that was far less overwrought
([http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/weve-gotten-wrong-robert-
fros...](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/weve-gotten-wrong-robert-frost-
classic/)) It got to the point quickly:

"DAVID ORR: He claims that he wrote it because he used to go on walks with the
English poet Edward Thomas, because Frost spent a brief time in England. It
was actually the beginning of his career as a poet.

And what he would like to say at readings afterward is that he and Thomas
would go on these walks, and then Thomas, who has a somewhat more romantic
sensibility than Frost, Thomas would always regret whatever path they had
taken.

And then afterward, he would say, well, we really should have gone to the
right. I could have shown you something over there. We should have gone to the
left. I could show you something over there.

And Frost was very amused by this. And so he wrote the poem as a kind of joke
at his friend’s expense."

In other words, it's more about regret than making the right choice, or that
you deceive yourself sometimes by dwelling on a choice that is actually
perfectly random. Or a million other interpretations...

~~~
imkevinxu
Fun Fact: The poem also directly lead to Edward Thomas' death as he took it
too seriously and decided to enlist in the army
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thomas_(poet)#War_servi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thomas_\(poet\)#War_service)

~~~
dang
A poet's death. (Edit: nope, fiction.)

 _On Easter Monday, 1917, the first day of the Arras Offensive, he paused for
a moment to fill his pipe. A shell passed so close to him that the blast of
air stopped his heart; he died without a mark on his body._

[http://www.poetryarchive.org/poet/edward-
thomas](http://www.poetryarchive.org/poet/edward-thomas)

Thomas was an astonishing thing, an established literary critic who suddenly
morphed into a great poet. All his poems were written in the three years
before he died, and he kept getting better. _The Other_ is hauntingly good:
[http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/239754](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/239754).
WWI famously killed many poets, but I wish Thomas hadn't been one of them. He
had pure English in his veins, and I like him better than Frost.

~~~
copsarebastards
It's interesting what people like. I've never been able to identify well with
WWI poets. This is a good example. It's clearly well-written: the opening
stanza captures me and takes me back to times hiking, when you emerge from the
trees and the sunlight. But the rest is just something I can't understand or
identify with. Perhaps it was intended to feel alienating, but it doesn't make
me feel anything, not even alienated. It's just there, a thing I'm not that
interested in.

I'm not criticizing your taste, by the way: I think everyone is entitled to
look for what they want in art. I'm just interested in what you see here.

For comparison, here are some poems I like:

[http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176996](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176996)

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/10/fools-
errands](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/10/fools-errands)

[http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/on-turning-
ten/](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/on-turning-ten/)

~~~
dang
If the main idea of the poem—a man who follows a strange version of himself
through the countryside—doesn't resonate with you, then yeah there probably
isn't much of interest there. But I find it haunting and mysterious.

Then there is the melody of the language and the original way he puts words
together that sounds modern and old-fashioned at the same time. And how he can
write about nature in a way that brings it to life, which is super rare—most
nature writing is boring, and the way Thomas does it seems full of feeling,
something that was about to fall out of modern poetry. And then it's just
perfectly executed, except I wish he hadn't rhymed "mirth" with "earth".

To me that poem suggests a modernism that was possible but in the end never
happened. I like Eliot and Pound, but their virtuosity is altogether different
and they are far more detached and alienated. Of course we can't say what
Thomas would have been like after WWI, which had a shattering effect on all
art.

You're certainly right that we needn't all like the same things. Thanks for
sharing those links. I admire the Elizabeth Bishop poem for its
construction—it's clever how the middle lines all rhyme—but I'm somehow not
convinced she means what she's saying. The Billy Collins poem is beautiful,
though. Thanks!

------
Grue3
Has anyone considered that the roads are equally travelled precisely _because_
every traveller chooses the less travelled path?

Could the poem actually be a commentary on load balancing?

~~~
noonespecial
That is exactly the sort of thing some pseudo-highbrow twit would have given
me a 'D' for in high school after assuring me that "there are no wrong
answers".

I love it.

~~~
davidw
I once got a D for an essay on "how does the symbolism help us understand the
author's message" when I said that, frankly, it didn't, and that if the author
wanted to send a message, he should have come straight out and said it.

Sorry, but that's the way my brain is wired, and I was exasperated by the
teacher going on about a bunch of stuff that to me seemed like you could just
make it up as you go along. "Well, the boat symbolized her relationship with
her father, and when the anchor broke, it meant that her affair with her uncle
was doomed from the outset because the barnacles on the boat were symbolic of
the calluses on his hands, because he was a factory worker, rather than one of
the landed gentry..." or some horse shit like that.

You can downvote me, but I won't apologize for loathing that kind of thing.

~~~
jtr1
Interesting. I've come across similar stories and sentiments among scientist
and engineer friends. A frustrating experience to be sure, but it strikes me
that these are people whose jobs require them to sort out systems which,
without proper foundational knowledge, would seem pretty confusing and
arbitrary. What surprises me most is to hear a person whose identity is
grounded in curiosity and exploration write off that experience as horse shit,
without questioning first whether they lacked the tools to understand it.

Perhaps you just had a bad teacher?

~~~
StavrosK
What if there were really no signs of metaphor, and the boat trip was just a
boat trip? How do you know you didn't just read a bunch of things into
something the author didn't intend?

~~~
avn2109
My favorite Hemingway quote:

"There isn't any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is the old man.
The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The sharks are sharks, no better, no
worse."

~~~
Double_Cast
Citation? I find it hard to believe this quote came from the same man who
invented the Iceberg Theory [0]. I recently read Hemingway's "Hills like White
Elephants". This short story _begs_ for symbolic interpretation. If we assume
a lack of symbolism, there's no plot. Ostensibly - literally nothing happens.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceberg_Theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceberg_Theory)

~~~
vidarh
I don't see how the Iceberg Theory would conflict with a lack of intentional
symbolism at all.

Separate from that: There's plenty of literature with no plot.

When I was younger I loved writing stuff with no plot. My best grades were on
works with no plot whatsoever. I wanted to write a novel-length work with no
plot, in part because of the challenge, in part because I immensely enjoyed
reading stuff with no plot.

I haven't read "Hills like White Elephants". Maybe it's full of intentional
symbolism. Maybe not. But the absence of a plot is not the evidence of
symbolism.

~~~
Double_Cast
Hm, the wikipedia article contains a similar quote at the very bottom.

> _When asked about the use of symbolism in his work, and particularly in the
> most recently published Old Man and the Sea, he explained: "No good book has
> ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck
> in...That kind of symbol sticks out like raisins in raisin bread. Raisin
> bread is all right, but plain bread is better....I tried to make a real old
> man, a real boy, a real sea, a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them
> good and true enough they would mean many things. The hardest thing is to
> make something really true and sometimes truer than true."_

After reading the wiki more closely, I think there's a middle ground. It seems
the Iceberg Theory operated on Hemingway's omission of _explicit_ symbols.
Hemingway never outright mentioned the larger themes in his works. But the
holes left were suggested by the context.

I think it's like instead of painting a mural of a deer in a forest, he'd
paint a mural of (what appeared at first glance to be) an empty forest. Except
on closer inspection, there would be a trail of disturbed vegetation,
accompanied by fresh deer tracks.

The deer clearly exists somewhere in the scene's vicinity even though the
audience never sees it. Similarly, I think Hemingway let the themes influence
the story, but never let those themes manifest themselves as symbols the
reader could easily point to. Instead, the themes manifested as a vibe the
reader couldn't explain on a conscious level, or manifested as a series of
convenient coincidences. Maybe we can compromise that Hemingway achieved
symbolism without the symbols.

\-----------------------------------------

I suspect much of our disagreement concerns the definition of "plot". In my
mind, I can't see a short story or novel without a plot that would be very
interesting. It would be equivalent of watching a film which showed nothing
but paint dry for the entire duration. Even if there's no physical action, any
halfway interesting movie is bound to have at least some sort of psychological
action.

If there's no plot, then I would probably classify it as poetry (which "Hills
like White Elephants" clearly isn't).

Maybe a better idea would be to point me to an example or two of successful
stories which omit symbolism.

------
aresant
What is truly meta is that this entire "misunderstanding" is CENTRAL to the
Poem's popularity.

Variations of this story and headline have been popping up for years - like in
the wonderfully informative "Top 10 Most Misunderstood Lines in Literary
History" (1)

Or heck, as a monologue in Orange is the New Black (2)

Didn't see it there because you're too high-brow and busy, so saw it in
business insider last year like me (3)?

The poem's dual-meaning is central to its popularization - similar to the "big
reveal" that drove the Six Sense to become one of the top 100 grossing movies
of all time.

(1) [http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-most-misunderstood-lines-in-
li...](http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-most-misunderstood-lines-in-literary-
history.php)

(2)
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/08/15/orange_is_the...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/08/15/orange_is_the_new_black_on_road_less_traveled_show_gets_robert_frost_poem.html)

(3) [http://www.businessinsider.com/frosts-road-not-taken-poem-
in...](http://www.businessinsider.com/frosts-road-not-taken-poem-
interpretation-2014-3)

(3)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken)

~~~
ghaff
>The poem's dual-meaning is central to its popularization

I'm not sure about that. Ask 100 people at least peripherally familiar with
the poem what its central point is and 99 would answer something along the
lines of "taking the less popular path."

I agree with the author's point though. I remember a Dartmouth English
professor talking about this years ago and once he pointed out what the words
actually said, the actual meaning seemed obvious in retrospect.

~~~
jack9
> he pointed out what the words actually said, the actual meaning seemed
> obvious in retrospect.

> Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

This section negates the "actual meaning" being derived by the author. The
reference to the future aspect of having traveled the choice he did not make
is imaginary. Once we make a choice, rarely do we change it. The poem is not
about choosing the less traveled path, for sure. It is lamenting the
possibilities offered, unknown, and therefore attractive in hindsight for a
choice made and likely never faced again...allowing for exploration of the
reality.

------
unoti
I never felt like the Road Not Taken was about individualism, even when I
first read it in high school. To me it's about the fact that sometimes you
have to make momentous decisions in life, in which neither choice is clearly
right or wrong. Either way you choose, the choice is defensible, but once you
make the choice, you can't go back. I decided to go into computers, instead of
joining the Air Force and becoming a pilot, for example. Sometimes in life you
will meet someone who clearly could have been your soulmate, but you decide to
let the acquaintance lapse. I wanted to spend a couple of years in the Peace
Corps, learn another language, and help people build power plants in remote
locations, but I chose to get married and start making babies instead. And I
look back on these kinds of choices and say I made the right choice. But no
matter what choice you make, it makes all the difference. Isn't this what the
poem is about?

Regardless of what the poet says, I think the important thing is to be out
there on that road, travelling, and doing your best. It's all too easy to stay
in your comfort zone forever rather than travelling.

Edit: corrected title. Apologies!

~~~
Falcon9
How do you get the title of the poem incorrect when commenting on this story?

------
jameshart
"It may be the best example in all of American culture of a wolf in sheep’s
clothing."

Not sure about that. I suspect Springsteen's _Born in the USA_ takes that
crown, or perhaps any number of satires that have been taken at face value
(looking at you Paul Verhoeven).

~~~
jandrese
There is an interpretation of Born in the USA other than how the system beats
down the common man with its useless wars and arbitrary bosses?

The lyrics are pretty unambiguous. Unless I guess you only listen to the
chorus and ignore literally everything that isn't "Born in the USA"?

~~~
mhurron
> The lyrics are pretty unambiguous. Unless I guess you only listen to the
> chorus and ignore literally everything that isn't "Born in the USA"?

Which is exactly what happens.

~~~
seanalltogether
And here's dave grohl illustrating how true that is.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFHD7kuAqu4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFHD7kuAqu4)

------
a3n
It is in fact my favorite poem.

I've never thought of it as a triumph of choice, "See, it's because I chose
thus!"

And I've never thought of it as self-deception, which I think is what the
article says. A poem is in some sense our own, but to the extent that you can
be wrong about a poem, I think this article is wrong.

I think it's merely a wonderful acknowledgement that choosing different paths
do make a difference, even when it doesn't appear to matter at the time.
Frost's character wasn't making an obviously important choice between the
paths. But way did in fact lead to way, and life was probably different,
partially determined, because of this metaphorical inconsequential choice of
direction.

My other favorite Frost poem is "The Hired Man," from which we get the line
"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in."

~~~
eyeinthepyramid
I don't think that your interpretation is wrong, but I think you also have to
acknowledge that poem is about how when we look back at these choices, we
romanticize and assign meaning to these choices that were essentially random.

The man in the poem while reminiscing says 'I took the road less traveled by'
but the narrator explicitly says that travel had 'worn them really about the
same'. So the self-deception part is fairly explicit.

~~~
chippy
>The man in the poem while reminiscing

This is not true. This may be the reason for the misreading! He is not
reminiscing. he is commenting about reminiscence itself. The author says that
in the future he will look back with a sign and state that.

------
joaorico
Robert Frost himself wrote about this intentional light mocking [0]:

"I suppose I was gently teasing them." [1]

"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." [2]

\--

[1]

"On one occasion he [RF] told of receiving a letter from a grammar-school girl
who asked a good question of him: 'Why the sigh?' That letter and that
question, he said, had prompted an answer. Amherst Mass April 1925

"Dear Miss Yates:

No wonder you were a little puzzled over the end of my Road Not Taken. It was
my rather private jest at the expense of those who might think I would yet
live to be sorry for the way I had taken in life. I suppose I was gently
teasing them. I'm not really a very regretful person, but for your
solicitousness on my behalf I'm your friend always Robert Frost"

[Finger, L. L.: "Frost's 'The Road Not Taken': a 1925 Letter come to Light",
American Literature v.50]

\--

[2]

"(a) One stanza of 'The Road Not Taken' was written while I was sitting on a
sofa in the middle of England: Was found three or four years later, and I
couldn't bear not to finish it. 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. (RF,
Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, 23 Aug. 1953; tape recording)."

"(c) Frost said that he wrote the poem, 'The Road Not Taken' for his friend
[Edward Thomas] and sent it to him in France, getting the reply, 'What are you
trying to do with me?' (L. Mertins: Robert Frost)"

[Thompson, Lawrance: Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, Notes.]

\--

[0]
[http://www.retiredtractors.com/Frost/Roadfrost.html](http://www.retiredtractors.com/Frost/Roadfrost.html)

------
kazinator

      The Fork Not Taken
    
      Two spaces forged in the obscure core
      And sorry I could not both address
      And be one stream of loads and stores
      Blocked while tables copy, bored
      Yielded to the next process(0)
    
      I got the new one, once unblocked
      And having perhaps the better claim,
      Because it was COW(1), not yet untwained(2)
      Though as per that POSIX doc,
      The two should look about the same.
      ---
      0. Not accurate.
      1. Hay, cows like it grassy!
      2. Naive misconception that there is a difference.

------
molotv
Clicked thru expecting it to be about "The Mending Wall"
[http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/frost-
mending.html](http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/frost-mending.html)

"Good fences make good neighbors." is often misused to mean the opposite of
what it does in that poem.

...at least I guessed the poet correctly.

~~~
whoopdedo
But Frost didn't invent that phrase. I hadn't read the poem since school, so I
didn't consider it before. But looking at it again now I notice that the
phrase is presented in an ironic way. So I turned to the power of the internet
and found that, indeed, "good fences make good neighbors" predates "The
Mending Wall" by about 30 years.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=zAgTAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22good%20...](https://books.google.com/books?id=zAgTAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22good%20fences%20make%20good%20neighbors%22&pg=PA29#v=onepage&q=%22good%20fences%20make%20good%20neighbors%22&f=false)

------
CurtMonash
My wife -- who has taught poetry at the college level as well as writing a
whole lot of popular novels -- reminds me from time to time of the
"intentional fallacy". What she means by that -- I think :) -- is that the
author isn't the sole determinant of a work's meaning.

So (while she's unavailable to be asked at the moment) I'm pretty sure she'd
agree that the poem is about both the things it's often claimed to be about.
Indeed, some of the works she and I both admire the most are ones that work on
several levels at once.

~~~
uxp
That's precisely what the author of the article determines by quoting from
private correspondence from the poem's author:

> “I’ll bet not half a dozen people can tell who was hit and where he was hit
> by my Road Not Taken,” he wrote to his friend Louis Untermeyer.

------
kej
Distantly related, _The Road Not Taken_ is also an excellent short story by
Harry Turtledove that the HN crowd would probably appreciate:
[http://www.eyeofmidas.com/scifi/Turtledove_RoadNotTaken.pdf](http://www.eyeofmidas.com/scifi/Turtledove_RoadNotTaken.pdf)

~~~
shaftoe
That's my favorite Turtledove story.

He also wrote a sequel.

------
DarkTree
Similarly lost in meaning is Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
which is a beautiful poem, but many people don't see the suicidal undertone.
I've had it memorized for years and only just learned about this.

~~~
mkaziz
I just reread it and don't detect that undertone. Could you explain it?

~~~
DarkTree
Like all literature, it is easy to draw different meanings from the same
words, but most of the suicidal undertone is simply in the last stanza:

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles
to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

The narrator has been traveling far to fulfill the promises he made to others.
He's looking at the lovely, dark, deep woods and thinking how peaceful they
are. The woods are a metaphor for death, which is dark and lovely because you
don't have to worry about life's hardships. The miles are not distance, but a
metaphor for time. The narrator decides he has to continue on, because he
cannot sleep/die before fulfilling his promises to those he made them to.

Frost was an amazing writer whose poems beautifully described rural settings.
But I think because of his brilliance, it is likely that his poems had deeper
meaning than their face-value imagery. But it's also possible that they were
one-dimensional, I just doubt it.

~~~
mkaziz
That's a very interesting explanation. It's much clearer now, thank you!

------
matt_morgan
Fantastic. It's not about tredding your own path. It's about how we embellish
our own pasts. I didn't know.

~~~
ctdonath
A good insight. The key is the middle line " _Though as for that the passing
[travelers] there / Had worn them really about the same_". Yes, he chose the
path less travelled, and the poem itself is remembered for extolling the
choice of the less travelled path - but that path was not barely used as we
all tend to recall the poem's point (and the author's future listeners
interpret), but instead was quite nearly the same and chosen only because it
hadn't been trampled quite as badly as the marginally more popular
alternative.

~~~
chippy
this is exactly the misreading!!

The paths were the same. He is saying that far in the future he will look back
and say that whatever path he took was less travelled, whereas in reality it
wasn't.

~~~
ctdonath
" _Then took the other, as just as fair, / And having perhaps the better
claim, / Because it was grassy and wanted wear_"

------
jsalit
Also presented here by John Green -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snQvRZ2vDHE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snQvRZ2vDHE)

------
andreaferretti
I may be ignorant, but I find weird that this is reported as the most famous
poem of the 20th century in America, and possibly the world. In fact, I had
never heard about it at all.

Honest question: is it that well-known? I don't think in Italy it is all that
common. Or again, it may be just me...

~~~
phaemon
It's well known in America, but I think in the UK something like "If" (Rudyard
Kipling) might be better (equally?) known. Or perhaps something from
Shakespeare ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?")

What about Italy? What's the most famous poem everyone knows of there?

~~~
andreaferretti
I guess that apart from the "Divina Commedia", it could be "L'infinito" by
Giacomo Leopardi. But "If" is pretty well-known, as well as many things by
Shakespeare

------
injulkarnilesh
It's already been well explained in Orange is new black. Here
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAkYlhhFvbk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAkYlhhFvbk)

------
midnightmonster
Frost's duplicity (sometimes triplicity, maybe more) is part of his charm. Yet
if there were not also insight and beauty, I think the charm--the mere
pleasure in being as clever as the speaker (if not as clever as the
poet)--would wear thin.

I truly love Frost, but I love even more Gerard M Hopkins. One gets the
feeling Hopkins resorts to dense layers of images not to share a joke with the
sufficiently-clever reader, but in desperate earnestness to show what can't be
said in prose. "Look--look! See this beautiful/terrible/mysterious thing!"

------
nsxwolf
If you have only the poem, the common interpretation is perfectly reasonable.
Frost said the poem was "tricky", which is a clue from the poet that the
common interpretation could be wrong. But what gives the poem meaning? Are you
allowed to interpret it yourself? Or does the poet's obscured intent trump
that?

In Blade Runner, Is Deckard really a Replicant just because Ridley Scott said
so later? There's a few clues in various cuts of the film, but nothing is a
slam dunk.

~~~
plonh
If you are careful, and parse the whole poem instead skilling the parts with
especially nonstandard grammar, you see the inconsistency between the path-
walkers thinking and the narrator's thinking and the "ages hence" perspective.
You have to reconcile those inconsistencies when reading.

------
electricblue
It seems to me that the poem is more about regret than the stories we tell
ourselves about our lives to make us feel better about the randomness of the
universe. The poet desperately wants to know what would've happened (if
anything) on the other side of the 'difference' but can never know.

~~~
colomon
Since becoming reacquainted with the poem a couple of decades on from 8th
grade English, I've read it as regret at the way age reduces your choices.
That comes from interpreting the fall woods as being the autumn of the
narrator's life, and focusing on

    
    
         "Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
         I doubted if I should ever come back."
    

That is, when you're young, you can choose one path and presume you can come
back and take the other path sometime; you've got lots of time. When you're
getting old, a lot of choices are more or less the only shot you will get; you
cannot count on having the time to come back and try the other path.

------
marquis
The NZ ad mentioned:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wwXfAFQoh8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wwXfAFQoh8)
(NZ isn't a large country: those roads probably ran to the same town anyway).

------
adregan
I like to think that Roland Barthes would have loved to use "The Road Not
Taken" in his piece "Death of the Author"[0]. Truly, at a scale that's frankly
staggering, agency has been given to the reader—though one could also argue
that the clipped version of the poem often remembered is a case of remixing
and rewriting and that the agency isn't merely passive interpretation but a
very active creative endeavor.

0:
[http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/threeEssays.html#barthes](http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/threeEssays.html#barthes)

------
x0054
Ok, a honest question here. And English is my second language, so maybe this
is why, but this middle part sounds like compleat nonsense to me. Is it just
me and I don't know how to read poems? Is it how people used to talk back in
the day?

> And both that morning equally lay > In leaves no step had trodden black. >
> Oh, I kept the first for another day! > Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
> > I doubted if I should ever come back.

I think I can understand the rest of the poem pretty well, but that 3rd stanza
just sounds like random words just tossed together. No? Maybe I just don't get
poems.

~~~
plonh
English poetry alters word choice and order in order fit the pronunciation
into patterns of rhythm and rhyme, and to convey emotion by putting certain
words together or apart. It is nearly ungrammatical, or you could say that
each poem has its own nonstandard grammar.

Here is what it means:

On that morning there were two essentially similar paths, not walked on so
much-- none of the fallen leaves were crushed into dirt. I decided to leave
the first path, and walk on it another day. Yet knowing how one path leads on
to another, I doubted that I would ever return to this place and have a chance
(to walk on that first path)

------
aaroninsf
ITT: many well-spoken comments reflecting how different personality types (or
if you prefer, ways of thinking, or, viewing or understanding the world...)
have very different relationships to poetry.

No such codification is perfect, but I find the Meyers-Briggs binning a useful
shorthand for understanding how different colleagues relate to the world (and
respond in different ways to different kinds of problem, management strategy,
social environment, etc...)...

...and in this thread there are comments which would make me bin people
immediately. :)

(There are no good or bad bins; just differences.)

------
ap22213
I'm particular struck by the part

"...long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the
undergrowth;"

It reminds me of my over-analysis in developing software. Sometimes, I over
think things, try to predict the outcomes of things, spend lots and lots of
time considering what's behind the 'bend': what's the perfect solution.
Analysis paralysis.

But, at a certain point, the analysis gives way to intuition. I choose the
path that 'feels' best, knowing that many different paths could have been just
as right.

~~~
chippy
...and five years later we justify to our peers "yes NodeJS was the right
choice after all!"

------
kazinator
In a different category, the "most too-literally-applied" poem in American
administration, however, is Emily Dickinson's _Tell all the Truth but tell it
slant--_.

~~~
mbubb
I love that poem. And Dickinson. This case reminds me of Plato's Allegory of
the cave. Beyond that - the quick transition from Truth to 'success'. And the
telling of fairy tales to kids to make the lightning less scary.

Wonderful monad of a poem.

And there are great images of angles in her works.

``` There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons – That oppresses, like
the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes – ```

------
eggoa
I'd like to think that those who appropriate the poem for car commercials and
such and fully aware of the poem's meaning, but are exercising a subversive
irony.

------
kendallpark
YES. I love the fact that someone has written about this.

I remember reading the full poem in high school and we were like, "That's...
not the poem I thought it was."

~~~
tgb
And it's a much better poem because of that!

~~~
skaevola
Is it? I much prefer the interpretation about rugged individualism. It's not
surprising to me that that's the interpretation that caught on in America.

This other interpretation seems so cynical. "Yeah, choices in life don't
really matter because you always end up at the same place, but I tell people I
picked the less obvious choice anyways!"

Sometimes it's actually good to believe in something, you know?

~~~
normloman
Even believing in a lie?

Not saying our choices don't matter, but we often attribute too much of our
own success to our choices, and not our circumstance. Gives off a distorted
view of reality. Coming to terms with the truth would be easier.

~~~
skaevola
I'm not convinced that believing in something false is always bad. For
example, there's a concept in psychology called an "internal locus of
control", which basically means believing that you have control over aspects
of your life. It turns out that having an internal locus of control is very
negatively correlated with depression, so it might be that holding these
beliefs actually help people's mental states. Another example would be people
turning to religious beliefs to cope with tragedy.

Anyways, I'd like to believe that the belief isn't false. I do believe we do
exert some substantial control over our own destinies.

------
werber
American nihilism is so often mistaken for something else

~~~
mbubb
Interesting - but too cryptic - point. The article mentions a scholar, Richard
Poirier, who was at Rutgers when I was a lit student there. I vaguely remember
lectures on "Emerson as the American Nietzsche", etc but that was a lifetime
ago.

American nihilism is terrifying. Philip Dick has created indelible images of
it. Minority Report and also a book which was recently made into a series for
Netflix a "what if the Nazis won WWII" story.

I remember growing up and having a hugely idealistic idea of the 60s. I saw
MLK, Bob Dylan, etc as these incorruptible, anti-commercial fonts of wisdom.
And in my lifetime they are used to sell khakis and Chryslers.

This poem fits into that narrative. Everything is ultimately for sale - that
is American nihilism?

Leonard Cohen gets at something in the poem/song "Democracy" describing
America as the cradle of the best and of the worst. The same engine that
powers innovation and imaginative leaps also fuels the intolerance and
wackiness so visible in our political process.

The poem in question says in short - you can choose any path; just come up
with the good story and an advert slogan to explain it later.

American nihilism?

~~~
werber
Sorry that was kind of cryptic and vague. I meant that the poem talks about
two things that are more or less the same, and then championing the more-or-
less equal path you chose to take as some great defining decision. To me
American nihilism is the championing of non decisions. Taking pride in your
political party, car brand, part of the country you live in, etc. Americans
tend to see meaning in the meaningless, morality in being content, identity in
pre-selected choices, and they do it with a smile.

------
code_sterling
We spent a week discussing the possible meanings in college. And each was as
valid as any other interpretation, this one was mentioned, but it was clear
that none were more valid than any other. You can't get a poem wrong, just
like you can't interpret a painting wrong. And artist will be inspired to
create, but what that means to the observer, is personal between them, and the
work.

------
Randgalt
Why should I believe David Orr? His argument is slim and I disagree with his
conclusion. I read the poem again after reading Orr's article and it has the
same meaning as it always has for me: go your own way and it will make all the
difference. We will never know Frost's true intentions and, frankly, it
doesn't matter. The words are the words regardless of what he intended.

~~~
vinceguidry
You can know Frost's intentions by reading the letters he wrote to his
colleagues about the poem. He makes his deception clear there. This was
alluded to in the article and you can go read the source material yourself if
you're not satisfied.

You are really making a statement about yourself and not about the poem. You
want to read it a certain way, and intend to keep reading it that way, because
that's the way you've always read it. The "words are the words" sentiment says
nothing about the words, but rather how you read them.

The sort of traditionalism you're expressing fascinates me, as the
psychological phenomenon appears to me to underpin things like climate denial-
ism, anti-vaxxing and religious fundamentalism.

At the very core, I suspect, is a tendency to be defensive about our
limitations. To apply enough critical analysis to the poem to divine Frost's
true intent, to become informed enough about science to accept the basics of
climate change, it takes a lot of time and effort, yet we treat people who
can't / refuse / just don't have the time to do these things as if they're
stupid.

So they retreat into defensive positions, that the evidence is suspect, why
believe Orr, I / we had a way to interpret the poem / organize society so why
should we change? Changing is cognitively expensive, just understanding that
we need to change is the expensive part.

~~~
tzs
I'm reminded of an amusing incident Asimov wrote about. He came across a large
class where the teacher was discussing the meaning of one of Asimov's works.
Asimov slipped in and sat in the back, and then afterwards went up to the
teacher, introduced himself, and said that the interpretation was interesting
but in several parts it was not what he had meant at all. The teacher replied,
"Just because you wrote it, what makes you think you have the slightest idea
what it's about?"

~~~
Randgalt
It's an important point, however. If the teacher had said "Asimov means X" the
teacher would be wrong. But, if the teacher is saying that he interprets the
words as X he is right.

------
jmadsen
I'll allow myself a semi-related tangent, just for the heck of it.

Another similar example of misunderstanding well-known lines from literature
is Shakespeare's "Now is the winter of our discontent..", which everyone
quotes meaning we are in dark times...

Except it is the opposite - "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious
summer by this Son of York.." is the full line.

------
musesum
This or that? I would bet: either way, one regret.

Until now, this thought will vet — a better look.

The past is done; the future not set.

Just keep on going, and watch your step.

------
bastijn
And here I am. At the end of a comment feed with many opinions about a poem
everybody knows. Wondering if I should have known this poem before I read it
today for the first time. Or if I could wave it away as just a USA thing.
Written by USA who falsely claims everybody outside US also knows the poem.
Pondering, which road did I take?

~~~
chippy
The more faithful comment would read:

And here I am at the beginning of a 278 comments thread where they are all
alike. And although they do seem to be saying the same thing, it appears they
get the same amount of upvotes. Anyhow, when I'm finished, I will give a sigh
and say I, I read and spent my attention better because the other unread
comment was not read by me and that made all the difference.

------
giltleaf
The whole argument of the article establishes a false dichotomy. While I'm
sure there are some people who can play the role both of the sheep and the
literary insiders (as in the author's description), I'm sure most people, like
the author, fall somewhere in the middle with their interpretation.

~~~
chippy
Well, (as seen in a few comments in this thread) the idea of the individualist
ploughing their own way is strong - and the misreading fits in really well
with it. I certainly used to follow this also. So I would get the idea from
the poem via pop culture or an idle hearing in an advert, and that would stay
with me. I wouldn't read it with the same attention as a literary person of
course. Perhaps thats the false dichotomy?

I now have more delight knowing that it is a commentary about how, when
dealing with a change, we can look into the future and see ourselves
justifying our actions regardless of which action we take.

------
jmount
It is like they started the essay before they knew they could actually come to
a coherent point.

------
mbubb
Tangentially saw this in Quanta magazine.
[https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150903-the-road-less-
travel...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150903-the-road-less-traveled/)

------
undershirt
looks like the annotations on genius have this interpretation as well:
[http://genius.com/46404](http://genius.com/46404)

------
markbnj
If art has a downside, it may be in the fact that there is always some very
smart person at hand to analyze it for you and explain why you don't
understand it.

------
vijucat
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one that was less popular on
Google

That was not a smart move

(With apologies to Frost fans).

------
RodericDay
I tend to love articles that tease a bit before revealing what they're about,
but I found this one a bit overwrought.

tl;dr: it's about Frost's "The Road Not Taken" ( _Two roads diverged in a
wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the
difference_).

This article, at its clearest, says:

> Certainly it’s wrong to say that “The Road Not Taken” is a straightforward
> and sentimental celebration of individualism: This interpretation is
> contradicted by the poem’s own lines.

However, the thrust of the whole article is better captured by its soggy,
everybody-wins non-conclusion:

> The poem both is and isn’t about individualism, and it both is and isn’t
> about rationalization. It isn’t a wolf in sheep’s clothing so much as a wolf
> that is somehow also a sheep, or a sheep that is also a wolf

~~~
jessriedel
> I tend to love articles that tease a bit before revealing what they're about

Could you give me some insight about why you like this? It's one of my least
favorite aspects of journalism. Most articles are bad, so don't you find that
you waste more time sorting through chaff?

~~~
RodericDay
hmmm I can try.

Sometimes a bunch of drifting around, talking at length in detail about
seemingly unrelated minutiae, and blatantly teasing the reader along can set a
mood or an atmosphere. If it is done properly, it can convey more than what
the words on the paper are explicitly saying, it just makes an impression.

An example that would maybe work for the HN crowd is this old essay about
Earthbound [0], where the writer (Tim Rogers, translator) "reviews" the game
by just going on long detours about fishing, being sick in bed, things that
happen in other games, etc. As a huge fan of Earthbound, it just captures a
lot of it for me.

An absolute master of this kinda thing was the well-known rock record critic
Lester Bangs (who, again, may be vaguely known to some; Philip S. Hoffman
played him in "Almost Famous"). His rock album reviews are barely recognizable
as such by the "8/10 graphics, 6/10 sound" crowd. He just goes on and on about
completely esoteric topics, from politics and his life philosophy and little
vignettes about his personal life, and occasionally relates it back to the
record. I don't know why, but I dig it. I've read "Psychotic Reactions and
Carburetor Dung", an essay compendium, a couple of times.

I don't know if I'd want something like that if I was writing an essay for
university, or trying to decide which laptop to buy, but it can occasionally
be a very nice piece of journalism.

[0]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20100102165201/http://www.largep...](https://web.archive.org/web/20100102165201/http://www.largeprimenumbers.com/article.php?sid=mother2)
(ps: it opens up with a really weird line about games being like prostitutes,
which I think feels stupid and dated, but it gets better after that)

~~~
tunesmith
Thanks for that description, it helps me appreciate the practice more. The
success of that technique entirely depends on the talent of the writer,
apparently, because I've come across a few too many "long form" articles after
"longform" became an internet buzzword, and where the writing just seems to
alternate between the topic and an unrelated topic in almost an algorithmic
fashion, before they are weakly tied together.

