HISTORY This Week

The Road Less Traveled

August 2, 1915. The poem appears in print for the first time this week, from Kentucky to Pennsylvania to Vermont. Every reader is transported to that same leafy path: “two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost becomes an immediate hit and will go on to become one of the most popular and well-known poems in American history. For many, it's about a spirit of individualism -- forging one’s own path. And yet… Robert Frost may have had a completely different meaning in mind. What—or who—inspired Frost to write this iconic poem? And what is it really telling us about how to make a choice? Thank you to our guests, Professor Jay Parini, author of "Robert Frost: A Life," and Professor David Orr, author of " The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong." Thank you also to Middlebury College Special Collections, Middlebury, Vermont for their 1953 recording of Robert Frost reading "The Road Not Taken".   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.