A GOOD DAY FOR WRITERS

A road taken - I-90 in Montana

This day seems to have been a good day for writers to be born: Tennessee Williams, A.E. Houseman, Erica Jong, Gregory Corso, Joseph Campbell, and my favorite, Robert Frost. I’ll always jump at an opportunity to include one of his poems in my blog. This isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last. The Writer’s Almanac entry will give you a bit of his history.

There is something about Frost’s poems that is very satisfying. Most everyone you’d care to talk to about his poems, poetry lover or not, will agree that that they do like The Road Not Taken. Everyone has had to make a decision or two in their lifetime. Everyone has looked back and wondered what life would have been like if they’d taken the other road. It’s pleasing to know that there was someone like Frost who could put that decision point into words.

The Road Not Taken

BY ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

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 shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

With thanks to Poetry Foundation  -  

STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING

A beautiful illustration by Susan Jeffers

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

BY ROBERT FROST

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

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.

A poem for December, for the month of “the darkest evening of the year.” This poem is why rhyme is so deeply satisfying to me.