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The Most Misread Poem in America (2015)
- dang 8y agoDiscussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10204255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10204255
- Semiapies 8y agoI think it's less that it's a misread poem than it's an unread poem for most people, who only know a few key lines taken out of context.
- rhacker 8y agoYeah first thing that came to mind was that exactly.
- ghaff 8y agoI do think misread is fair. As far as I remember, the traditional teaching and interpretation of the poem was the heroic individuality one. When a college English professor taught a number of decades ago that, in his view, that was the wrong interpretation that was novel to me and for many people. The meaning is perhaps still ambiguous in that a number of people I've discussed this with stick to the traditional interpretation. But I'm at least convinced that "The poem isn’t a salute to can-do individualism; it’s a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives."
- epicide 8y agoI think it's still fair to say it's mostly unread if all they remember (and think about) are a few selective parts that twist the original meaning. It's kind of like Every Breath You Take by The Police. People hear the full song plenty of times but they only think about the ones that match the happy love song pattern. Everything else is in one ear, out the other. In some ways, the "misinterpretation" bringing about an oppositional meaning is poetic in and of itself. EDIT: also, I'm not really trying to argue whether it's "unread" or "misread" (I could attribute selective memory to either one). It's that I think there's more to it than "misread" often warrants. Maybe everything I've said is what you meant by misread.
- hownottowrite 8y agoA far better article about this poem and the backstory: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jul/29/robert-frost-edward-thomas-poetry https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jul/29/robert-frost-e...
- jeffdavis 8y agoI liked both, but I found the Paris Review article more satisfying. This line in particular: "A role too artfully assumed ceases to become a role and instead becomes a species of identity..."
- jacobush 8y agoYeah, that line hit me like a punch in the guts. Edit; and "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." This is to me the spirit of America and can be seen in so many ways it projects its power.
- eruci 8y ago"Fire and Ice" is also quite misread and well recognized. Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.
- the_af 8y agoIn what sense is "Fire and Ice" misread? Does it not say "desire (fire) is the most powerful and potentially destructive passion, but hate (ice) is not far behind?". Disclaimer: never read any analysis about the poem, that's just my take.
- bryanrasmussen 8y agoit is also somewhat ironically meant I think: From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire by saying he holds with those who favor fire, he says in fact that he favors desire, which he has experienced in the past. He would like the world to end in desire. So he subtly changes the question from how do you think the world will end to how do you want it to end. But then being Frost, and somewhat ambiguous, he changes it back, deciding that hate will also suffice (to destroy the world). I mean obviously it is just very playful.
- OliverJones 8y agoBrings to mind the Sex Pistols' cover of Sinatra's My Way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKpsqgt2-9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKpsqgt2-9k
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Theodores 8y agoThe most misread poem in England is William Blake's Jerusalem. It was written two centuries ago and put to music a century later. It is the unofficial national anthem and you can hear it everywhere that English football, rugby and cricket teams go. All three of the main political parties sing it at their conferences. It gets an airing every time there is a royal wedding. It was the first thing one billion people got to hear at the opening of the 2012 Olympic Games - a solo performance by a child who happened to be born with only one hand. This poem has an extraordinary story, Blake was not famous in his time and only thirty years after his death did someone come along to write a biography of him. There were many other happenings that had to happen before Jerusalem became what it is today. The words appear to be patriotic but on further examination and with the right education the poem can be understood. It is an anti-capitalist, anti-church, anti-establishment masterpiece. Yet vast crowds of people can sing along with it, knowing all the words. It is in a different league of being misread to anything else. Study it.
- gerdesj 8y ago"The words appear to be patriotic but on further examination and with the right education the poem can be understood" I think it is both patriotic and also your thesis. That is the British Way.
- elihu 8y agoI wonder if this is a specific instance of a general principle, namely that sarcasm is hard to identify in written form.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- flying_whale 8y agoThis little comic strip made me see the poem in a whole new light. Something I keep coming back to whenever I'm faced with a big choice :) https://zenpencils.com/comic/60-robert-frost-the-road-not-taken/ https://zenpencils.com/comic/60-robert-frost-the-road-not-ta...
- nerdponx 8y agoThis really hit me in a way I haven't been hit by something in a long time. Thanks for sharing.
- signa11 8y agoif like this sort of thing, then, o. henry's 'roads of destiny', is the sort of thing that you might like as well :)
- scotty79 8y agoBasically hapiness is mostly function of your physical body, not your live's events. And the end is death all the same. So basically don't damage your body too much and you'll have all the happiness you could ever have being you. And even if you don't. Don't worry. It'll be over in few short decades anyways.
- DubiousPusher 8y agoI wrote about this specific topic in a poetry class I took in college. It's surprising how this sentiment was frequently demonstrated by Frost himself. He'd frequently claim how important some life changing moment was in his life and then later walk that back and It's been a long time back now so I can't completely remember all the examples I found but I think an uncle or such paid for part of his education. Frost would go back and forth about how this relative left him high and dry and making it on his own was very important. Then on other occasions he'd opine about how important this relative was and how it made a difference in his life.
- sooheon 8y agoWrite what you know.
- svat 8y agoI wrote a little answer about this poem on the Literature Stack Exchange a year and a bit ago: https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/493/why-does-robert-frost-contradict-himself-in-the-road-not-taken/2036#2036 https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/493/why-does-... (See also the answer there by ”Rand al'Thor” for useful historical background—referencing the Guardian article mentioned in another comment here—and the succinct answer by Mark Baker.) There is an apparent contradiction in the poem (which is what the question there was about), which disappears on a closer reading.
- alwaysreading 8y agoMany of Frost’s poems go misunderstood. Library of America collection for those interested in his lesser-known poetry - https://amzn.to/2DpmKWn https://amzn.to/2DpmKWn
- cabaalis 8y agoThe meaning of poetry is what the reader wants it to be just as much as what the author intended it to be. A single scene in the Netflix show "Daredevil" taught me more about the arts than anything else in my 34 years. An art dealer tells a man "I tell them it's not about the artist's name or the skill required, not even about the art itself. All that matters is: 'How does it make you feel?'"
- chc 8y agoBut in this case, this isn't just about "what the reader wants" versus "what the author intended." It's about "what the words actually say." The poem tells us that in the moment, the narrator sees that neither road is more or less traveled than the other, and only in the future will the narrator say he took the road less traveled by. We don't need to know anything about Frost or his intentions to see that this is what the poem says. So you might say that the meaning is not as important as how it makes you feel. But unless you're going to just come out and say that words have no meaning (and what would you say such a thing with?), the meaning of the poetry is somewhat independent of what the reader wants it to be.
- apocalypstyx 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game_(philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game_(philosophy)
- LoSboccacc 8y agoBut sometimes when the author say "the curtain is blue" the curtain is just blue. If a person reach some original enlightenment trough a poem words doesn't necessarily mean the word have an hidden meaning, it's likely that the poem meaning plus the reader baggage construed composed or concurred into an original thought that's derivative but independent from the work itself and attributing that specific enlightenment to the work alone seems inappropriate first because the meaning isn't there and second because it diminish the reader turning it's originality into passive dissonance An apple is an apple, if it moves to eat an apple because it reminds of grandma's apple pies then it's not that the apple itself has an universal meanings of grandma's. It has to you, but at face value it's still an apple for as much the eater wished it was grandma's pie, it still remains an independent thought formed from the apple but not what an apple is, the apple is still an apple.
- malloryerik 8y agoWhen I objected that, no, the two paths equally lay and that the difference was unimportant or unknowable, my high school English teacher forcefully badgered me back into the common misreading -- and then promptly took the minor glory of explaining the more accurate interpretation to the class for himself! He was smart, had a PhD in lit from UMass Amherst, must have known what I was getting at and in all likelihood consciously blocked me. I felt so cheated and for the first time saw a teacher as a competing ego rather than a helper, and I realized that I'd better learn when to trust myself, even in the face of authority.
- clwk 8y agoOn the bright side, this set you up perfectly for Emerson's 'Self-Reliance'.
- mruniverse 8y agoWhich would you choose now in that moment? The ego teacher or helper teacher?
- teekert 8y agoHa! That is a dick of a person, but he did teach you a lesson ;) Probably good to learn it as early in life as possible. I feel more and more like this as I grow older, man I should have trusted my own judgement right then and there.
- eecsninja 8y agoA further takeaway is to keep a hidden recorder when dealing with these academic authority figures. That way when they stab you in the back like that, you can expose them in front of your class. Just make sure you have a way out when they give you a failing grade.
- w1nt3rmu4e 8y agoOddly, my advisor (I have a BA in lit) asked the class to comment on the often ignored line -- but then left it when no one offered the more correct interpretation. (Why I didn't bring it up is another story.) Funny enough, not long ago a friend who attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop (considered the best MFA in writing in the country, if you're not familiar) said, out of the blue, "about that Frost poem" and I replied, "about the same." We both laughed. Apparently that misreading is widespread, even among the most promising new writers.
- js2 8y agoRelatedly, possibly the most misread quote in America: https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-ben-franklin-really-said https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-ben-franklin-really-said
- ykonstant 8y ago"If you like this post, please like our Facebook page and follow Lawfare on Twitter"?
- 8bitsrule 8y agoI find the lines: ---- Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; ---- to be perfectly clear ... and suited to the 'common misreading'... A poem is more or less ink spots on a piece of paper; it means what the reader finds in its deliberate ambiguity ... not what some 'expert interpreter' insists it means.
- chmod775 8y agoTo be fair, while ambiguity can be intended by the author, a poem usually has a finite number of meanings intentionally written into it. If those experts find meaning in a poem the author did not write into it, they failed at their job. If however a poem is found to mean something the author did not intend to say, the author failed.
- jacobush 8y agoLanguage is not static in time and space.
- chmod775 8y agoIt is your job as the reader/expert to interpret a poem based on the language as it was spoken and understood in the time period the poem was written.
- nsomaru 8y agoAn English teacher in high school, emphasising that poetry was subject to interpretation, once recounted to us that John Donne was once attacked in a newspaper over his exposition of the meaning of a poem that he himself had written!
- sooheon 8y agoThey suit the common misreading if the very next four lines don't exist. Which is why it's a misreading--it's like ignoring every word after "however," in a sentence. 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.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago> For any mass audience to recognize any poem is (to put it mildly) unusual. This isn't anywhere close to being true. Mass audiences routinely recognize poems; we call the phenomenon "popular music".
- strictfp 8y agoExcept that if you investigate it turns out that most people don't actually listen to the song texts to any meaningful degree.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoYet they can sing the whole thing verbatim? How does that work?
- strictfp 8y agoLexing vs parsing. ;)
- rimliu 8y agoAnd "Born in the USA" would fit perfectly in this discussion.
- jancsika 8y agoThe popular misreading comes from people who only remember (or perhaps only ever cared about) the last stanza. The other interpretation comes from carefully reading the whole poem. Regardless, most humans who come across a non-trivial number of paths will eventually converge on an important truth that is revealed by either of these contrasting interpretations. Someone who regularly rationalizes a choice between two indistinguishable paths as highly individualistic will eventually come upon a path not taken. At that point they will either fess up to their prior self-deception or carry on deluded. Alternatively, someone who regularly avoids the beaten path will eventually be faced with indistinguishable options. At that point they will either admit to themselves that not all choices are individualistic, or they will start deceiving themselves. Consequently, one ought to accept either reading of the poem as a reasonable starting point for a responsible adult to learn a valuable lesson about branching processes. Finally, all responsible adults who have learned the converged truth should be wary of anyone who in casual conversation dares utter a sentence starting, "Actually, you are misreading that poem..." I humbly offer the following canned response: "Wow, sounds like somebody is revved up like a douche."[1] [1] Most misheard lyric from "Blinded by the Light" by Bruce Springsteen
- hudibras 8y ago>[1] Most misheard lyric from "Blinded by the Light" by Bruce Springsteen Actually...it's the Manfred Mann [0] cover of the song that contains the lyrics in question; Springsteen's original version [1] uses slightly different words for that line and so it's perfectly intelligible. [0]https://youtu.be/Rpq35wyDi7I?t=10 https://youtu.be/Rpq35wyDi7I?t=10 [1]https://youtu.be/7Iaca30QbOo?t=80 https://youtu.be/7Iaca30QbOo?t=80
- jancsika 8y agoSo "cut loose like a douche" vs "revved up like a douche."
- russellbeattie 8y agoPedantic, narrow-minded pinheads will always find a way to prove their superiority with ridiculous crap like this. "You're doing it wrong" is classic click-bait for a reason [1]. "You're using 'ironic' incorrectly! Oxford commas is the only correct punctuation! Everyone should use Tau instead of Pi!" Yada, yada, yada. The sentiment of this poem is expressed extremely clearly, which is why it's so popular. We're not all idiots, illiterate or suckers. The last stanza clarifies and reinforces the rest of the poem. Any alternative interpretations of this poem are from 'smarter-than-thou' morons who want to show off how they are more educated and intelligent than you. 1. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/09/everything-youre-doing-it-wrong/380160/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/09/every...
- jacobush 8y agoSo I've been reading this wrong the entire time?
- isoskeles 8y agoI appreciate your cynical anti-cynicism, but most people probably do misinterpret the poem. And they don't have to be idiots either. Also, the last stanza, and specifically the last line states the opposite of the meaning. It does not "clarify" it. "And that has made all the difference." In actuality, there was no difference. So it's not clear, especially not if someone isn't paying attention to what they read. A lot of people don't pay attention to this sort of stuff, and again, it doesn't mean they're idiots or they did something wrong. I didn't get it the first couple of times I came across this poem. But go on, anyone who tries to explain something commonly misunderstood is some kind of a jerk or whatever.
- colomon 8y agoIt's not exactly the opposite of the meaning... it's more that the last three lines are framed as how he will one day describe the choice he just made, even though he has already described that choice in a way that makes clear his future description is going to be largely BS.
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- HugoDaniel 8y agoI don't know this poem, the author and any of the other supposedly "best-known modern poems and their authors". Yet I can sing a few of the Vinicius de Moraes poems by heart.
- Insanity 8y agoYeah, though I recognize the sayings through 'pop culture' obviously. As it goes "all generalizations are bad!". But I'm under the impressions that they meant this is a poem known to all _American_ readers which could be possible if it is required high school material. Personally I'd have expected 'The Raven' by Poe to be more well known, but that might just be my bubble. :)
- matt4077 8y agoSee also: "Good fences make good neighbours", which was (possibly/probably) intended to be sarcastic.
- ehecatl 8y agoHere's a thought... Americans can't live with ambiguity.
- xellisx 8y agoAnd who misread the title as "The Most Misread Porn in America"?
- alexandercrohde 8y agoI came in to this pretty skeptical. I think being skeptical of things "experts know" about art is absolutely reasonable (e.g. I still see no justification for idolizing the Mona Lisa). However, after reading the wikipedia article [1] it makes a pretty compelling case that this poem is poking fun at the type of person who projects too much meaning into "mistakes" from the past. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken
- kset 8y agoLike all great poems, there are multiple, opposite meanings built into it, held in tension by deliberately ambiguous meanings of words. Here is one set of opposites: “it made all the difference” (in the last line); This could be a good difference or a bad difference or — since, importantly, we don’t even know if the speaker will survive in the future to utter that last wistful line — a catastrophic difference. Here’s another set of opposites: making a difference vs. not even making a difference — I’d argue that these are both possible (it’s not that one is a “popular misreading” as claimed by the article). The speaker is acknowledging that he has no really good reason, after all, for choosing one road over the other at the moment of decision; he is recognizing the bit of self-delusion he had to exercise in order to rouse himself to a decision...but that certainly doesn’t mean that it won’t indeed turn out to have “made all the difference” in the end. He and we just don’t know. But, taking a step back, I’d argue that it isn’t even clear that the chosen road really did turn out to be “equally well traveled” (as the commentary of the article hinges on). This itself could be another bit of mild self-delusion. The speaker suffers from grass-is-greener-itis, always pining for the road not taken (it’s even in the name of the poem!). He did not choose the road he was last looking down (until it “bent into the underbrush”) because it looked too well traveled to him and he wants to be independent... but once he chooses the other road and sets out, this “other road” also begins looking too well-traveled for his taste. Chronic dissatisfaction coloring his perception? After all, his perception would have been more objective when pondering both roads equally, before investing himself in the decision. Perhaps the road taken really is less well-traveled. Again, we just don’t know the underlying reality; the poem deliberately prevents us from knowing.
- stillsut 8y agoThe problem boils down to the poem being taught in high school when the average American teenager has yet to have made any independent choices, nor have they ever really had to live with the consequences of some decision made when they were a younger, different person. Most middle class kids live a very scripted lives, but are constantly hammered with the idea that soon they will be called upon to make their own decisions - usually characterized by a binary to continue the scripted path - college, corporate job, marriage in late twenties or thrities - or a second, riskier outlet into 'there be dragons' land. In this context, it's not surprising that the poem has become a concise stand-in and beautiful articulation of contemporary middle class social consensus. If I'm remembering this correctly, I came across this poem in the wake of a solo startup disaster. And I instantly got the second meaning without any need for literary deconstruction or critical nudging. I vividly remembered the excitement of the choice at the start. I now knew about how we tend to ponder what might have been. And could list many "founder success stories" told ages and ages hence of how I - I chose Angular2, and that has made all the difference. And that is genius of this poem, that it can (only?) be read differently by those with a certain amount of lived experience. It hides its meaning in plain sight and straight forward vocabulary (unlike Wasteland) and let's the reader insert himself and his entire life into this tiny vignette.
- lucas_membrane 8y agoIt says that everyone understands what "White Christmas" is really about. They don't.