[.ca] The Road Not Taken and Other Poems (ISBN 0486275507)

No 'Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening':
I was looking forward to reading 'Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening', but came away disappointed. Of course, 'The Road Not Taken' is worth the price of admission regardless. It is chock-full - as chock-full as 53 pages can possibly be - of other Frost goodies. Overall, a good book for the price and a great addition to your order, but for serious Frost devotees I would suggest a more comprehensive collection.

rooted in New England:
These poems seem firmly rooted in New England and seem to be timeless, though decidedly pre-modern feel to them (this was originally published in 1916). Some of these poems may seem familiar ... "The road not taken" is popular at high school graduations. There are poems of nature such as The Oven Bird ("There is a singer everyone has heard,/ Load, a mid-summer and mid-wood bird,") or "Birches ("and they seem not to break; though once they are bowed/ for low for long, they never right themselves") but with wider significance. There are also poems of rural isolation such as "The Hill Wife" and "Snow". His poetry plays by literary and poetic rules, and may not be simple to read, but he does not oversimplify life.

The Essence of a Moment ý Poetry by Frost:
Frost, like no other poet, captures a moment that we all have experienced at one time in life. He paints a picture with such vivid strokes of literary imagery that the mind brings the reader back to a moment in time, almost feeling the sensations of past experiences. For example, I recently made a decision where I was torn between family and career interests. To ease the anxiety of a lost professional opportunity, I reasoned that the chance would present itself again someday, maybe. Thinking of Frost I realized that he captured that very self-rationalization in the Road Not Taken. "Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back." As others have pointed out already, the largest drawback of the book is lack of thickness. Even though one of my all-time favorites, "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening," is not present, others like "An Old Man's Winter Night" make up for it. If you need a small book to stick in a backpack while hiking for moments of inspiration while on the trail, you could do worse than to carry along a little bit of Frost.