Mountain Interval

by Robert Frost

Mountain Interval (1916), Robert Frost’s third published poetry collection describes a certain sense of the future as circumscribed by the choices of the past one has made. The collection’s first and most famous poem, “The Road Not Taken,” in which Frost deploys the forked path in the woods as a metaphor for the course of life itself. While the situation evokes the first canto of the Divine Comedy, Frost avoids Dante’s overtly allegorical manner by creating a speaker whose spare vocabulary and vernacular syntax lends the poem a more parable-like narrative force.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction, Literature, American, Book Club, 20th Century

92 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 15, 2019

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

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Boy’s Will (1914) established Robert Frost’s reputation, but Mountain Interval (1916) maintained that reputation and enhanced it. The book contains four commonly acknowledged masterpieces (“The Road Not Taken,” “Birches,”“Out, Out--,” “The Oven Bird”) and a few other popular favorites, such as the amiable “Time to Talk” (a parable of work and friendship), “Mr. Brown’s Descent” (a humorous story about an unflappable farmer), and “Christmas Trees” (seasonal haggling between the narrator and a city tree-broker.)

But there are many other poems in this collection too, almost all of them of interest. I’m a particular fan of the darker Frost, and so my favorites here include—besides “Out, Out—” and “The Oven Bird” of course—“An Old Man’s Winter Night” (a grim reverie between sleeping and waking), “The Exposed Nest” (a couple care for—and then promptly forget about—an imperiled nest of baby birds), “The Cow in Apple Time” (a cow besotted, almost ruined with fruit), and “The Vanished Red” (the tale of the murder of the last Native American in town.)

Just as good as these—perhaps better—are the three sustained narrative poems. It is in such longer, blank verse efforts that Frost often exhibits his greatest subtlety and ambiguity. “Snow,” in which a farm couple spend an evening with a local preacher seeking shelter from a winter storm, is probably the simplest, but even here the man and wife’s dislike of their surprise guest, combined with their natural human sympathy for him and his family, produce an interesting tension. In “Bonfire,” a man shares the story of a nearly catastrophic fire he once set, and tells his listener that tonight he plans to take his children up a hill so that they can all “scare ourselves” with the fire. (“War is for everyone. For children too,” he says.)

But the best of the monologues is “In the Home Stretch.” Here we meet a middle aged couple, apparently without children, who has just moved in from the city into the country. The change seems to be the husband’s idea, although the wife is reconciled to it. They treat each other gently, but, although they are looking forward to this new adventure together, we also get the sense that this feels to them as if it may be their last adventure too. (Not only is this poem fine in itself, but it resonates with a series of five lyrics collected under the title of “The Hill Wife,” which is also one of the more memorable pieces in this small volume.)

Here are two of the book's memorable, though lesser known, short poems. First, the melancholy inebriated cow, and secondly, the brutal accounting of the passing of the last Native American in Acton, Massachusetts.

THE COW IN APPLE TIME

Something inspires the only cow of late
To make no more of a wall than an open gate,
And think no more of wall-builders than fools.
Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools
A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,
She scorns a pasture withering to the root.
She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten.
The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.
She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.
She bellows on a knoll against the sky.
Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.


THE VANISHING RED

He is said to have been the last Red man
In Action. And the Miller is said to have laughed--
If you like to call such a sound a laugh.
But he gave no one else a laugher's license.
For he turned suddenly grave as if to say,
'Whose business,--if I take it on myself,
Whose business--but why talk round the barn?--
When it's just that I hold with getting a thing done with.'
You can't get back and see it as he saw it.
It's too long a story to go into now.
You'd have to have been there and lived it.
They you wouldn't have looked on it as just a matter
Of who began it between the two races.

Some guttural exclamation of surprise
The Red man gave in poking about the mill
Over the great big thumping shuffling millstone
Disgusted the Miller physically as coming
From one who had no right to be heard from.
'Come, John,' he said, 'you want to see the wheel-pint?'

He took him down below a cramping rafter,
And showed him, through a manhole in the floor,
The water in desperate straits like frantic fish,
Salmon and sturgeon, lashing with their tails.
The he shut down the trap door with a ring in it
That jangled even above the general noise,
And came upstairs alone--and gave that laugh,
And said something to a man with a meal-sack
That the man with the meal-sack didn't catch--then.
Oh, yes, he showed John the wheel-pit all right.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both …


The first lines of this collection.








1916. Two years after North of Boston, but a little further from the city, seemingly. Not so many conversations, more short poems. The increasing distance from the city's "civilization" seemed to me to occasion some pretty dark poetry, not all by any means, but poems about a woman's unhappy, barren life (The Hill Wife), about two kids starting a fire in the forest just for the excitement of watching the burn (The Bonfire), about a terrible accident, with a very hill-people-like denouement ("Out, Out –"), about an enigmatic – what – is it a murder? – I'm not sure (The Vanishing Red). So these "dark" poems, of varying shades and intensities, reveal an aspect of the mountain culture up there north of Boston both astonishing and unpleasant.

Other poems easier to read. A couple long conversation poems that I enjoyed (In the Home Stretch, Snow).

Not really any "theme" that I could see - other than a newness of experience produced by contacts with people and with nature that are different than those encountered closer to the city. Wilder, more primitive, more solitary too - thus producing more elemental emotion. In some way or other I encountered these sorts of emotions in The Exposed Nest, Range-Finding, The Telephone, Hyla Brook, Bond and Free, Birches, and Brown's Descent.

Then there were a few that evoked a more recognizable response: The Road Not Taken, The Telephone, Birches, A Time to Talk, The Gum-Gatherer (complicated rhyming structure with a nice rhythm), and The Sound of Trees.

Perhaps after all what I think is that Frost seems to surprise me from poem to poem more consistently than I'm used to, even given my fairly limited exposure (still) to poetry.


some poems and comments


These two the shortest

A Time to Talk

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, "What is it?"
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.


and


Range-Finding

The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung
And cut a flower beside a groundbirds' nest
Before it stained a single human breast.
The stricken flower bent double and so hung.
And still the bird revisited her young.
A butterfly its fall had dispossessed,
A moment sought in air his flower of rest,
Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung.
On the bare upland pasture there had spread
O'ernight 'twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread
And straining cables wet with silver dew.
A sudden passing bullet shook it dry.
The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly,
But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.


"Out, Out –"

warning

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them "Supper". At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap –
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand,
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all –
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart –
He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off –
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then – the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little – less – nothing! and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the dead one, turned to their affairs.

how to comment? about a poem …


The Sound of Trees

I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth from somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.



The Road Not Taken

first poem becomes last

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim.
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
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.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

… who can read that and not catch their breath … one of his classics



. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: History of Philosophy
Next review: The Lost Sherpa of Happiness
Older review: Hope, Human and Wild: True Stories of Living Lightly on the Earth Bill McKibben

Previous library review: North of Boston
Next library review: New Hampshire

[Samir Rawas Sarayji · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Frost’s poetry is like reading well crafted stories compressed into a few pages of sublime imagery or allusions.

[••• Emilee ••• · Rating 2 out of 5]

It may just be my minute aversion to poetry (I do like some poetry, don’t worry!), but this wasn’t very good. Most of the poems didn’t make sense or were boring. Some were cute and pleasant in their nature way, since that what Rob’s famous for, but the majority were super meh.

The first poem in the book is “The Road Not Taken”. And after that, it goes downhill and fast.

[Bettie]

Project Gutenberg

[Illiterate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frost suggests we live between a past we chose and a future it constrains, eg. abstract Road not Taken & concrete Home Stretch.

[Penny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm guessing from this initial experience of reading a book of Robert Frost's that I'm not likely to love him as much as many others have over the decades. His name is holy in some quarters.

There were several poems in this collection I genuinely loved: "The Road Not Taken" of course; "Birches" goes without saying. "Out, Out —" is chilling and tragic as is "The Vanishing Red," and well-worth reading the collection for.

But others left me a bit confused, the language seeming forced to fit a rhyme scheme, an experiment not entirely successful in other cases. One longer narrative poem was not always clear as to speaker.

Perhaps I should reread the book, give Frost a second chance. There are those four I mentioned that are powerful and perfect. But I can understand why anthologies serve so well. The best works of a poet are presented, the less successful poems not.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favorites: “In the Home Stretch,” “Birches,” “Putting in the Seed,” “The Hill Wife,” “The Bonfire,” “A Girl’s Garden,” and “Snow.”

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two of Frost's most famous poems were in this collection - "The Road Not Taken" and "Birches." I had forgotten how much I like both poems - the first about decisions in life, the second about remembered childhood and a desire to relive parts of it. My other favorite was "The Exposed Nest" and choosing to do good and protect the innocent in spite of possible consequences. This collection had some unexpected poems like the shocking actions in The Hill Wife "V. The Impulse" and the even more shocking events of ""Out, Out-"". And finally the pictures of something treasured ("Christmas Trees"), something worthwhile ("A Time to Talk"), and something learned ("A Girl's Garden") were all quite beautiful.

Memorable lines:
-You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their sight
And too much world at once - could means be found.
...
We saw the risk we took in doing good,
But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it... ("The Exposed Nest" lines 17-19, 27-29)

-We Love the things we love for what they are. ("Hyla Brook")

[Sean Curley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mountain Interval opens with "The Road Not Taken", Robert Frost's most famous (and most misunderstood) poem, but the remainder of the collection was unfamiliar to me on my initial reading. In many ways it's hard to review a poetry collection, since every poem is its own work of art, and essentially unrelated to its surrounding works (not the case for every collection, of course, but it is the case here). Other standout entries in this collection would include:

- "The Exposed Nest" is a wonderfully simple interrogation of moral choices, as well as the depiction of a parent-child relationship ("A Girl's Garden" touches on somewhat similar terrain later in the collection).
- "Range-Finding" is perhaps the best display in the collection of Frost's ability to sketch a simple scene, in this case the effect of warfare glancingly depicted by its effects on the environment.
- "Out, Out-" is the most surprising poem in the collection (though it makes more sense when one recognizes the literary allusion in the title), veering into tragedy in a manner rather reminiscent of Robert Browning's "Porphyria's Lover".
- "Brown's Descent, or the Willy-nilly Slide" is Frost just having fun, presenting a folktale account of a humorous incident.
- "The Vanishing Red" is the most overtly political subject, dealing with the treatment of American Indians by the American public. In contrast to "Brown's Descent", a similarly folktale-ish framing device takes on much darker hues here.

[Sterlingcindysu · Rating 4 out of 5]

April is National Poetry Month! Here's Frost's famous book of poems for free on Kindle from Amazon.

OK, I didn't realize that Frost had a dark streak. There's one poem there, The Vanishing Red and Out, Out that are pretty bloody.

I looked it up and postage stamps were .02 back in 1916...so how a live tree could go for .03, I don't know.

About his most famous poem--from the Interwebs--
Robert Frost wrote “The Road Not Taken” as a joke for a friend, the poet Edward Thomas. When they went walking together, Thomas was chronically indecisive about which road they ought to take and—in retrospect—often lamented that they should, in fact, have taken the other one. Soon after writing the poem in 1915, Frost griped to Thomas that he had read the poem to an audience of college students and that it had been “taken pretty seriously … despite doing my best to make it obvious by my manner that I was fooling. … Mea culpa.” However, Frost liked to quip, “I’m never more serious than when joking.” As his joke unfolds, Frost creates a multiplicity of meanings, never quite allowing one to supplant the other—even as “The Road Not Taken” describes how choice is inevitable.



Well, yeah, sure, who wouldn't?

[Daniel Kleven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published in 1916, this was the original collection that included "The Road Not Taken." This book was also combined with his two earlier books in a larger collection that won Frost his second Pulizer Prize for poetry.

I enjoyed these poems, many of them were taken up with "winter" (and coldness, and snow, and Christmas). I almost laughed out loud at "The Cow in Apple Time"! Some of these poems were really thought provoking, like "The Bonfire," and especially "Snow"--the longest poem in the collection, about a minister caught out in a raging blizzard on his way home to his family, this one would take (and repay) repeated readings, and extended analysis in a poetry class or something. The shifting moods, and the "theme" (which I can't quite pin down as of yet), anyway, it's been a nice ride with Frost. I will almost certainly revisit him in the future.

[Jaime · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t reach for poetry—
let’s be honest, it usually gathers dust,
lined up on my shelves looking smart,
but not exactly my Friday-night pick.

Book club said, read Frost,
so I shrugged and said, fine, twist my arm.

Then—bam—The Road Not Taken kicks things off.
Talk about an opener.
It’s quoted to death,
embroidered on throw pillows,
yet still manages to hit perfectly when you read it whole.

The Sound of Trees—
yes, Robert, I too am tired of standing still,
thanks for calling me out.

And Birches?
Made me want to ditch adulting,
climb a tree,
and swing until the world stopped nagging.

So, poetry isn’t my go-to.
But Frost? He made me glad
I wandered his path—
wit, warmth, and all.

[Phillip Marsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favourites;

• The Road Not Taken
• A Patch of Old Snow
• In the Home Stretch
• Hyla Brook
• Birches
• Putting in the Seed
• The Hill Wife (parts I to V)
• The Bonfire (REALLY loved this)
• Locked Out
• “Out, Out—“
• Snow
• The Sound of Trees

[Samuel Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Birches and Snow

[Alicia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Great first poem and then it only goes downhill. It's boring and I don't see why he wrote it as poetry, the form doesn't add anything. Maybe they would have worked better as short stories.

[Julie Failla Earhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Choices of past seem to be a theme with me lately it seems. Recently I was induced to read a collection of poetry for my book group. Luckily for me, one of America’s most beloved poets, Robert Frost, was chosen.
From Frost’s many collections, my friend chose Mountain Interval. These 30 poems were originally published in 1916. However, Frost made several changes to the collection’s sequencing and released the new (and improved?) edition in 1920.
I’ve read both the 1916 version and the 1920 version (thank God for libraries), and I don’t feel that it makes any difference as to the order. This collection contains one of the most well-known and cherished pieces of prose in American history: “The Road Not Taken.”
The collection is divided into six sections: Christmas Trees (probably my favorite ones), In the Home Stretch, Birches, The Hill Wife, The Bonfire, and Snow (my second favorite). Do I see another pattern here with the winter? Yes, I do love winter. And snow.
I give Mountain Interval 5 out of 5 stars.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

We saw the risk we took in doing good,
But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it; so built the screen
You had begun, and gave them back their shade.
All this to prove we cared. Why is there then
No more to tell? We turned to other things.
The Exposed Nest

Besides his skills with making his verse sing and developing the most rustic images into complex metaphors—Robert Frost is a first-rate actor. He adopts a persona in every poem. In fact, we seldom hear the real voice of Frost in any of the poems contained within these two collections, just this wise-old rustic fella mulling over roads in the woods, birds singing, and birch trees. He describes things simply and then, calmly, reflects a quiet moment, then transforms them into deep reflections on the mysteries of the universe and of being human. That’s not the voice of Frost—that’s the voice Frost creates to convey his poetic sensibilities.

Take it from me: Frost was not an active farmer. His biographers note he tried to be a farmer but, frankly, wasn’t good at it and took up teaching. Though well read, he labors to ensure his poetry is simple and natural: Let’s talk about trees, let’s talk about birds, let’s talk about neighbors. He makes as if he wakes up one morning and writes this stuff while waiting for the coffee to brew before heading out to the fields. Yeats says it best about writing really good lines of poetry:

I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’
Adam’s Curse

The amount of sheer talent and effort which goes into this poetry is staggering. Frost worked hard to make these poems seem effortless and simple.

Mountain Interval begins with his famous poem “The Road Not Taken.” Everyone recognizes this poem; its last stanza is used to espouse independent living: “That’s right, people, I took the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference!” Never mind the fact the narrator just told us for three stanzas both roads were “really about the same.” He sighs at the end, because in the end he feels he has to justify his decision to take one road over another. Why not say it was the better road because no one else took it, he thinks. He envisions himself saying just that before he has even stepped onto the path. It’s not praise for independence, for pioneering a path the common herd was too ignorant or timid to pursue. The ending is so strong, so well-written, we tend to overlook what led to the final two lines. I’m sure Frost would be amused to realize how “ages and ages hence” we continually misunderstand this simple poem.

In fact, Mountain Interval is about taking routes through life and where these routes take us. We can have the grandest of intentions, but, in the end, we’re like Farmer Brown (“Brown’s Descent”) going about our evening chores and suddenly sliding a couple miles downhill without any viable means of stopping or changing direction. How we get where we get isn’t as interesting to Frost as how we think or react to the fact that we end up somewhere.

New Hampshire is not as superior a collection as Mountain Interval; it actually has a few weaker poems in the Frost canon. It’s still good poetry, but by focusing on politics or anti-war, he’s moving beyond is usual métier. For a change of pace, he even adopts the persona of an old rustic woman recounting a childhood memory in “Wild Grapes.” Funny, she sounds a lot like his persona of an old rustic man—only she is a different gender.

The poem from this collection which surprised me was “A Fountain, A Bottle, A Donkey’s Ears, and Some Books.” The narrator is promised a guided trip by Old Davis into the mountain woods to see an abandoned Mormon settlement. When Davis admits he can’t find it and takes the narrator to see a mountain stain in the shape of a bottle and then suggests they hike to a valley which looks like it has donkey ears after an avalanche, the narrator gets upset. The guide then makes an astute observation:

For God’s sake, aren’t you fond of viewing nature?
What signify a donkey’s ears and bottle,
However natural? Give you your books!
Well then, right here is where I show you books.

Has the adopted persona cracked? Can we see the real Frost—a peevish man bickering with his tour guide that nothing’s original to see out on these mountain trails? Davis sees a “book guy,” not a New England farmer taking a break from chopping firewood or plowing the field. Old Davis takes the narrator to the attic of an abandoned house where a deceased poetess once lived and wrote poetry: “She was ‘shut in’ for life. She lived her whole /Life long in bed, and wrote her things in bed.” Old Davis shows the narrator a box of the poetess’s published book of poems in the attic left to the elements. The narrator then reflects on the incident in the closing lines:

All the way home I kept remembering
The small book in my pocket. It was there.
The poetess had sighed, I knew, in heaven
At having eased her heart of one more copy--
Legitimately. My demand upon her,
Though slight, was a demand. She felt the tug.
In time she would be rid of all her books.

While he had provided us with descriptions of his mountain trek with Old Davis to this abandoned house, what stays with him are the books, the poetry. For Frost, it’s not just the roads or the bird singing in the woods; it’s remembering the poetry.

I won’t forget this poetry, either. And that, that makes all the difference.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I admit it. Frost has never been one of my favorites. All that rhyming and nature and stuff. But now...I look at life a little differently. I am no longer an angst-ridden teen or a young mother or middle-aged. I am a woman who plants a garden and watches the seasons and celebrates every single day as a miracle and suddenly...Mr. Frost speaks to me. Apparently almost old dogs can discover new things and open their minds and take more in. How wonderful is that!

[John Hatley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always had a difficult time with poetry. Robert Frost's poetry is one exception. Beautiful.

[Eileen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.0 stars (liked it)

This book has a variety of Robert Frost's poems. My favorites in this book are: The Road Not Taken, Bond and Free, and A Girl's Garden.

[Shazza Hoppsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had no idea there could be such a dark underbelly described in poetry of farming life

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Early Robert Frost is superb Robert Frost.

“One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”

[Kev Willoughby · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not really a poetry buff, so I feel that a review is beyond my expertise. All I remember from studying poetry in high school was how to label the rhyme scheme. I get distracted trying to pick that out now and it becomes difficult to focus on what the actual meaning of the poem is, but I do like Robert Frost. He is the author of my favorite poem, which is included in the beginning of this collection (The Road Not Taken). I've always considered it my favorite because it resonates with me and probably most other people. And although interpreting the meaning of poetry seems subjective to me as a practice, I think that when you find a poem that speaks to you, that's how you can know that the poem is "good."

With that said, although most of the other poems in this book seemed average to me, I did find one more poem that I really enjoyed. It is called "Birches," and it is a reminiscence of youth. My favorite part of the poem serves as an appropriate summary of the entire work:

"So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood"

I like the idea of an easily accessible object or a place as a representation of a simpler time. The old saying that you can't go home again is true, but sometimes an old song will take you back there in your mind. And it brings a smile to your face, not necessarily because of anything about the song itself, but the feelings and memories that the song represents. I believe that Robert Frost saw that same value when he passed a birch tree, taking him back to his childhood. It wasn't the tree itself that was special. It was the time of no responsibilities that we all took for granted in our younger days, thinking they would never end.

And if one poem in the whole book can take the reader to another place and time like that, then it's a worthwhile read.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you enjoy reading poetry? I haven’t read much poetry since college, but reading this collection made me think I need to pick up poetry again.

I read this collection of poetry in January for the What the Dickens Book Club on Facebook. There was a great discussion about it last month.

My thoughts on this collection:
• I haven’t read any Robert Frost poem since my college days. I either read his poems as individual poems or as part of a “complete collection.” This was the first time I read them in a collection as they would have been published. It was very interesting.

• The collection includes one of my favorite poems, The Road Not Taken.

• The poems give the reader a sense of place and time – that you are living on a farm in rural Vermont in the early twentieth century.

• I especially liked the poem where a city guy tried to rip Frost off and buy one thousand pine trees for a total of $300. This would only be three cents per tree! It was interesting how Frost made this experience into a poem.

• Poems are a nice length to read and think about before bed. With all that is going on in the world, they were a good escapism read.

Overall, Mountain Interval by Robert Frost was an enjoyable poetry collection and I highly recommend it.

Book Source: Purchased on my kindle from Amazon.com.

This review was first posted on my blog at: https://lauragerold.blogspot.com/2025...

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mountain Interval was Robert Frost's third volume of poetry that was initially published in 1916, and then republished around 1924 with some additional selections and some changes in the sequencing of the collection. I chose to read the original 1916 version, which didn't include some additions made in later editions such as "The Last Words of a Blue Bird" and "Assertive," but in most cases the editions were identical. Unlike his previous volumes, Mountain Interval includes a mixture of poetry genre from the dramatic monologue (see Snow and In the Home Stretch) as was the emphasis in North of Boston, to shorter narrative poetry such as Meeting and Passing. Probably the most well known poems in this collection are "The Road not Taken" and "Out, Out--." Some of the poems were very symbolic such as "The Oven Bird," a sonnet which, in my mind, tells how God, through nature, tells biblical stories such as, in this case, the Garden of Eden and The Fall. Other poems simply tell a story, such as Frost's humorous "Brown's Descent" or "The Gum Gatherer."

Regardless, however, of when a person reads these poems, they will find something in them that speaks to each person individually, and they will speak to that person differently, depending on where they are in the time of their life. Maybe there is a lonely housewife who will sob when she reads "The Hill Wife," series, or another wife who will wonder about a recent move as she reads, "In the Home Stretch." Regardless, of that time, there will be a message for each of us, and that is what makes Frost's poems so timeless, and personal. Whether we be in the beginning of our lives, or in the twilight, he speaks to each of us. But as Frost says,

"Ends and beginnings--there are no such things.
There are only middles."

[Connie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a collection of 31 poems by Robert Frost. It was first published in 1916. The first poem is probably his most famous, “The Road Not Taken.” The volume was later reprinted after shuffling the poems around a bit.

While I think there is a big subjective element to poetry, I must confess that I have a huge gap in my ability to analyze it effectively. It was intriguing to me to read the many positive reviews of this collection. There was a lot of talk of the imagery as well as the depth and reflective nature of these poems. Some of the positive reviews talked about how this collection of poems had common themes that gave a cohesion to the whole. Perhaps someday, after I have studied up on poetry analysis, I can revisit this collection.

My experience was, I suppose, more surface level. I didn’t care for the depressive, moody nature of these poems. Some of them were also rather gruesome and bleak in nature. I found myself confused about the first poem, his most famous, “The Road Not Taken.” I think people have the tendency to focus on his last couple lines about the road he did take, but it’s interesting that the title of the poem focuses on the road he didn’t take. I have read from other sources that this poem is often misinterpreted.

I guess my conclusion is that I didn’t subjectively enjoy these poems, but I am intrigued about the analytic possibilities. I look forward to learning more so my next experience can bring some objectivity to the table.

[Jimgosailing]

“The Road Not Taken” - see notes under David Orr’s book The Road Not Taken: Finding America In The Poem Everyone Loves And Almost Everyone Gets Wrong

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
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 trouble black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
- “The Road Not Taken”

“You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair Before them over their heads to try in the sun…”
- “Birches”

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Robert, yes, in fact nature does tend to have massive beautiful parallels to life and the human experience. Fortunately, we have the ability to express those connections through the use of language and poetry. But lord, no one said you needed to use the world's most trite rhymes and on the nose symbolism you could ever possibly have thought of. And those random short story poems throughout... why?

Frost might be the world's most overrated poet imo. Boring. Not horrible, but not good. The one good thing I can say about his writing is that at least he feels sincere about it which can't be said about many authors.

[Ken Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prior to reading this collection of Robert Frost's poetry, I was only familiar with his "The Road Not Taken." I always thought it a beautiful metaphor for choosing life's path. This small collection of his works contains many similar gems that combine thoughtful observations of nature, human nature, and the cycle of life. It is a book of perspective and reflection.
Pro tip: I benefited by asking one or two of my favorite AI companions (LLMs like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini) to elaborate on the meaning of the poems. They weren't always helpful, but they often deepened my appreciation of the poem.
Highly recommended as a small but thought-provoking life travel guide.