A Road Not Taken Poetry Explication - Essay Example

Then in November 8, 1894, The Independent newspaper of New York published his first ever professional poem. In 1985, Frost married his long time girlfriend and fiancee Elinor Miriam White. She proved to be a significant inspiration in Frosts poetry until her death in 1938. The couple had moved to Britain in 1912 after a failure of their New Hampshire farm. It was there that Frost met other modern day poets as Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves and Edward Thomas who inspired and motivated him. While there, Frost also found friendship in poet Ezra pound who contributed to the promotion and publication of Frost’s work.

At the time, of his return to the United States in 1915 Frost had published two full collections, North of Boston and A Boy’s will which had established his reputation as a re-known poet. Frost went on to become the most celebrated poet in America increasing his fame and honors with each new book. Though his work was some-what of traditional form and by principle associated with life of New England, Frost is merely a neither minor nor regional poet. The author of mystical and often searching themes, Frost is a modern poet in how he adhered to language and the complexity of his work through its layers of irony and ambiguity.

Until his death in Boston on January 29, 1963, Robert Frost taught and lived in Massachusetts and Vermont for years. The road not taken is a metaphorical poem relating to the period and the amount of consideration it takes an individual to make a momentous decision. In reference to Frost’s biography, he made decisions that turned his life around totally. In the poem, the road not taken uses the path as a general metaphor for his life. He starts. “ Two roads diverge in a yellow wood”(Line 1) Here Frost introduces the metaphorical two roads which are primary to the poem.

“And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long there I stood.” (Lines 2 and 3)According to the phrase Frost is trying to explain to us that we find ourselves in situations where necessity dictates it for us to make decisions. Where we have to choose this over the other, some of us spend quite a substantial amount of time deliberating over things, trying to trying to identify the best decision. Robert himself at one point in life made the decision to quit Harvard. He went to live on his farm with his wife to concentrate more on his poetry writing.

In the process of making this decision, he must have deliberated on what is best for him and what makes him happy. In this stanza of the poem, Robert Frost writes that he is at a crossroad where he has to choose which way he was going to embark on, to continue with his journey. Day after day we find ourselves in situations where we need to make choices. Some involve little things others might change our lives wholly, thus the need to take our time to think about what would be the decision in relation to our lives.

This stanza aptly explains this phenomenon, since Frost describes how he is at that intersection for a long while trying to decide which path would serve him best. When we look at the second stanza Frost also writes “Then took the other, as just as fair.” (Line 1) Frost explains how he gave both paths an equal amount of thought and concentration. Frost continues to explain his actions by asserting that one should not look at his or her choices without carefully thinking things over.