The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

The best-loved poems from one of American literature's most towering figuresNo poet is more emblematically American than Robert Frost. From "The Road Not Taken" to "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," he refined and even defined our sense of what poetry is and what it can do. T. S. Eliot judged him "the most eminent, the most distinguished Anglo-American poet now living," and he is the only writer in history to have been awarded four Pulitzer Prizes.Henry Holt is proud to announce the republication of four editions of Frost's most beloved work for a new generation of poets and readers.In this brilliant selection of Frost's classic poems, students and scholars alike will encounter a body of work central to American culture.

Genres: Poetry

289 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1971

About the author

Flinty, moody, plainspoken and deep, Robert Frost was one of America's most popular 20th-century poets. Frost was farming in Derry, New Hampshire when, at the age of 38, he sold the farm, uprooted his family and moved to England, where he devoted himself to his poetry. His first two books of verse, A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914), were immediate successes. In 1915 he returned to the United States and continued to write while living in New Hampshire and then Vermont. His pastoral images of apple trees and stone fences -- along with his solitary, man-of-few-words poetic voice -- helped define the modern image of rural New England. Frost's poems include "Mending Wall" ("Good fences make good neighbors"), "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" ("Whose woods these are I think I know"), and perhaps his most famous work, "The Road Not Taken" ("Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- / I took the one less traveled by"). Frost was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times: in 1924, 1931, 1937 and 1943. He also served as "Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress" from 1958-59; that position was renamed as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry (or simply Poet Laureate) in 1986.

Frost recited his poem "The Gift Outright" at the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy... Frost attended both Dartmouth College and Harvard, but did not graduate from either school... Frost preferred traditional rhyme and meter in poetry; his famous dismissal of free verse was, "I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down."

Reviews

[Fadoua RDS]

A one go poem, that has a lot of meanings.

[Piet · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sympathetic poet who shares his love of anything in nature with his readers.
His language is never difficult, his message is clear and his meditations on a butterfly, leaves, a grindstone, a mountain are sometimes surprisingly original.
Although his material is in 2020 a bit outdated and his approach lacks sting or aggression it remains a
remarkable achievement.
He even made me meditate on an egg when I was cooking one. I wondered about the miracle of a hen producing one every day, changing its fodder into this shelled mass of white and yellow. I also thought of the people who found out that they had to cook it first in order not to become sick.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The edition that I read had some commentary, which sometimes enabled me to see Frost's poems from another perspective. All in all, my favorites remain the same, but now I feel better for having read more of his body of work. He is truly one of America's most-beloved poets, and with good reason.

[Catwall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetry. The book begins with 23 page introduction to Robert Frost, a study of his poetry. Book includes dozens of his poem.
I got this book in a used book store, it has a stamp from Beaverton High School so was probably used as a text book.