The Road Not Taken and Other Poems: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Robert Frost

by Robert Frost

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

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

[tess · Rating 4 out of 5]

actual rating: 3.5/5
sorry for the late review. i've been busy prepping for my mid-terms. wish me luck. 👍

[Daniel · Rating 1 out of 5]

so bad. I've been a tenacious reader this year, and I can't even stomach this one. so many classics I've read have been just genuinely awful.

[Luca · Rating 4 out of 5]

The new book has uncut pages, so you must cut them open first.

The book begins with an introduction to the poet, his work and his life, which I found useful.

My main complaint is that the poems in the book are only from his early career, which I do not understand as a choice.

Otherwise, reading the book, you will find that Robert Frost has some simple and light poems that anybody can enjoy, while others are dark and convoluted, requiring more time to appreciate.
This variation makes reading his poems an enriching journey.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I honestly did not understand much but some poems were written well. In general I liked it enough to finish it. My favourite poems have to be 'Wind And Window Flower' and 'The Road Not Taken'.

[Adan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection by Robert Frost is perhaps the best poetry collection of the last hundred years or so. It is rife with many jewels—a veritable poetic treasure trove—each poem, especially the shorter ones, are so dense and multi-faceted that you cannot help but pick them up again and again to look at from every possible angle, in all manner of light. I would have liked to have been able to take a stroll with Frost in his New England woods.