12 ms·

David Orr did a talk on NPR that was far less overwrought (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/weve-gotten-wrong-robert-frost-classic/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb

by creeble 11y ago

David Orr did a talk on NPR that was far less overwrought (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/weve-gotten-wrong-robert-frost-classic/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/weve-gotten-wrong-robert-fros...) 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...

ttkeil 11y ago
Cue the loss aversion chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory
septerr 11y ago
The backstory clears things up greatly. Thank you for posting this!
- LoSboccacc 11y ago
  however, if I were to ignore the backstory just for fun and apply the law of logic to the poem wording, given the information the road not taken are both, since the poem state he's taken the less used road and the two road ahead are equally worn, he got back to the road he came from. (and by necessity more people went to the crossroad from the other two roads and left on the other road without going to the road the writer is coming from)
  - chippy 11y ago
    ahh but the poem does not state that he took the less used road. It states that in the future the man will state that the road he took was less used.
    - jack9 11y ago
      He imagines that he will face the choice again, which is unlikely via: Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
  - copsarebastards 11y ago
    Eh, this debate has been over in literary criticism circles, not because anybody has particularly convinced everyone, but because the debate isn't that interesting. You're taking the perspective of T.S. Eliot and other New Critics. See here for a survey of ideas on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorial_intent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorial_intent
ewzimm 11y ago
Thanks for that! Much more informative than the article. I think the rest of the commentary is important too. Like the original article says, poems are meant to be interpreted, and I think Frost played with the words to encourage different interpretations, even the literal reading of the last few lines out of context. The poem is essentially a commentary on interpretation. There's the initial evaluation of the paths, evaluation along the path, and an evaulation of future evaluations, showing how those interpretations change over time. The initial evaluation is that the less worn one might be more interesting. During the walk, there's the interpretation that they're probably both the same, and an evaluation of future evaluation, emphasizing the importance of the choice and implying self-deception. I think this follows the actual propagation of consequences according to chaos theory. At the moment when a choice is made, the effects are relatively small, but we all know that long-term effects of those minor differences cause large divergences in the future. So there's an actual element of truth to the final evaluation, even though it's considered as self-deception, because of the passage of time and repeated self-interpretation of the choice, even if the roads were about the same. Essentially, the choice itself is consequential, even if the immediate results of the choice are not.
kbutler 11y ago
I prefer this more concise background explanation of the poem. However, we are misreading the article as being about the poem, when actually it is about literary misinterpretation...
- veddox 11y ago
  Now that's what I call 'meta'! In a discussion about an article about a poem, you are saying that the article isn't actually about the poem but about what the public thinks about the poem...
jldugger 11y ago
So it's really a poem about the economic theory of opportunity costs...
imkevinxu 11y ago
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_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thomas_(poet)#War_servi...
- seizethecheese 11y ago
  The romantic romanticized non-romanticism?
- dang 11y ago
  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.
  - hartror 11y ago
    To spare the feelings of his widow Helen, she was told the fiction of a "bloodless death" i.e. that Thomas was killed by the concussive blast wave of one of the last shells fired as he stood to light his pipe and that there was no mark on his body. However, a letter from his commanding officer Franklin Lushington written in 1936 (and discovered many years later in an American archive) states that in reality the cause of Thomas' death was due to being "shot clean through the chest". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thomas_(poet)#War_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thomas_(poet)#War_servi... Still poetic in a meta kind of way.
    - dang 11y ago
lubujackson 11y ago
This seems to happen a lot with Robert Frost poems... "Mending Wall" seems to be about enjoying working alongside a neighbor to fix their stone wall, but it's really more of a lament about the walls people build between each other.
- Double_Cast 11y ago
  This one time at the library, I picked up a Frost anthology with commentary and skimmed it for about 30 minutes. The main thrust I took away from the author's commentary was that Frost was notorious for his sense of sarcasm. It was sort of his shtick. But he was so subtle about it, he often lamented that nobody recognized his genius. I had an English professor who also held a congruent opinion of Frost. He said that during Frost's own lifetime, academics and plebs alike heralded him as this wise, folksy, american farmer. They adored him. Then a few decades after he died, academia reread Frost's poems and said "Holy cow, these are actually pretty depressing."
anon4 11y ago
This is an often-seen case, I think. People have a concept in their head they want to see attached to a popular saying and when along comes something that kind of fits the bill, it gets used as the bearer of the message, regardless of its actual original intent. More mutated examples are proverbs like "the proof is in the pudding" and "the exception that proves the rule", which express concepts people want expressed and attached to easily recognizable sentences. Nobody really reads the poem, they just hear the words and the popular concept attached to them. You can probably find a lot more examples like that.
- jschwartzi 11y ago
  Actually the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
platz 11y ago
"Yet it’s also not quite right to say that the poem is merely a knowing literary joke disguised as shopworn magazine verse that has somehow managed to fool millions of readers for a hundred years."

by creeble 11y ago

ttkeil 11y ago

Cue the loss aversion chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory

septerr 11y ago

The backstory clears things up greatly. Thank you for posting this!

LoSboccacc 11y ago
however, if I were to ignore the backstory just for fun and apply the law of logic to the poem wording, given the information the road not taken are both, since the poem state he's taken the less used road and the two road ahead are equally worn, he got back to the road he came from. (and by necessity more people went to the crossroad from the other two roads and left on the other road without going to the road the writer is coming from)
- chippy 11y ago
  ahh but the poem does not state that he took the less used road. It states that in the future the man will state that the road he took was less used.
  - jack9 11y ago
    He imagines that he will face the choice again, which is unlikely via: Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
- copsarebastards 11y ago
  Eh, this debate has been over in literary criticism circles, not because anybody has particularly convinced everyone, but because the debate isn't that interesting. You're taking the perspective of T.S. Eliot and other New Critics. See here for a survey of ideas on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorial_intent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorial_intent

ewzimm 11y ago

Thanks for that! Much more informative than the article. I think the rest of the commentary is important too. Like the original article says, poems are meant to be interpreted, and I think Frost played with the words to encourage different interpretations, even the literal reading of the last few lines out of context. The poem is essentially a commentary on interpretation. There's the initial evaluation of the paths, evaluation along the path, and an evaulation of future evaluations, showing how those interpretations change over time. The initial evaluation is that the less worn one might be more interesting. During the walk, there's the interpretation that they're probably both the same, and an evaluation of future evaluation, emphasizing the importance of the choice and implying self-deception. I think this follows the actual propagation of consequences according to chaos theory. At the moment when a choice is made, the effects are relatively small, but we all know that long-term effects of those minor differences cause large divergences in the future. So there's an actual element of truth to the final evaluation, even though it's considered as self-deception, because of the passage of time and repeated self-interpretation of the choice, even if the roads were about the same. Essentially, the choice itself is consequential, even if the immediate results of the choice are not.

kbutler 11y ago

I prefer this more concise background explanation of the poem. However, we are misreading the article as being about the poem, when actually it is about literary misinterpretation...

veddox 11y ago
Now that's what I call 'meta'! In a discussion about an article about a poem, you are saying that the article isn't actually about the poem but about what the public thinks about the poem...

jldugger 11y ago

So it's really a poem about the economic theory of opportunity costs...

imkevinxu 11y ago

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_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thomas_(poet)#War_servi...

seizethecheese 11y ago
The romantic romanticized non-romanticism?
dang 11y ago
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.
- hartror 11y ago
  To spare the feelings of his widow Helen, she was told the fiction of a "bloodless death" i.e. that Thomas was killed by the concussive blast wave of one of the last shells fired as he stood to light his pipe and that there was no mark on his body. However, a letter from his commanding officer Franklin Lushington written in 1936 (and discovered many years later in an American archive) states that in reality the cause of Thomas' death was due to being "shot clean through the chest". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thomas_(poet)#War_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thomas_(poet)#War_servi... Still poetic in a meta kind of way.
  - dang 11y ago

lubujackson 11y ago

This seems to happen a lot with Robert Frost poems... "Mending Wall" seems to be about enjoying working alongside a neighbor to fix their stone wall, but it's really more of a lament about the walls people build between each other.

Double_Cast 11y ago
This one time at the library, I picked up a Frost anthology with commentary and skimmed it for about 30 minutes. The main thrust I took away from the author's commentary was that Frost was notorious for his sense of sarcasm. It was sort of his shtick. But he was so subtle about it, he often lamented that nobody recognized his genius. I had an English professor who also held a congruent opinion of Frost. He said that during Frost's own lifetime, academics and plebs alike heralded him as this wise, folksy, american farmer. They adored him. Then a few decades after he died, academia reread Frost's poems and said "Holy cow, these are actually pretty depressing."

anon4 11y ago

This is an often-seen case, I think. People have a concept in their head they want to see attached to a popular saying and when along comes something that kind of fits the bill, it gets used as the bearer of the message, regardless of its actual original intent. More mutated examples are proverbs like "the proof is in the pudding" and "the exception that proves the rule", which express concepts people want expressed and attached to easily recognizable sentences. Nobody really reads the poem, they just hear the words and the popular concept attached to them. You can probably find a lot more examples like that.

jschwartzi 11y ago
Actually the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

platz 11y ago

"Yet it’s also not quite right to say that the poem is merely a knowing literary joke disguised as shopworn magazine verse that has somehow managed to fool millions of readers for a hundred years."