“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood . . .” Those are the first words to Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken." One hundred years after their publication, Frost’s immortal lines remain unbelievably popular. The poem seems straightforward enough: it's about boldly living outside conformity, right? Wrong, says poetry columnist David Orr. He says nearly everyone hopelessly misreads Frost's poem. Orr joins us Friday as we explore the meaning of "The Road Not Taken" and the history behind it. [Rebroadcast]
David Orr is the poetry columnist for the New York Times Book Review and a professor at Cornell University. He's the author of Beautiful & Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry. He's the author most recently of The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Almost Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong [Amazon|Indiebound].