Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken" (1915)

How many Pulitzer prizes has Frost won?

4

Whose 1961 presidential inauguration did Frost read a poem at?

John F. Kennedy

Where did Frost work as a poetry consultant?

Library of Congress

What is one of the most recognizable stylistic qualities of Frost’s poetry?

His careful attention to the voices and lives of the common person

What region of the U.S. was Frost known for portraying?

New England

Where was Frost born?

San Francisco

Who was Frost named after?

Robert E. Lee (Confederate general)

What did Frost criticize in his early poems?

The violence perpetrated by his ancestors against America’s Indigenous populations

What poem did Frost deliver at John F Kennedy’s inauguration?

“The Gift Outright”

In what poem did Frost write about America in more positive terms?

“The Gift Outright”

Even though Frost was friends with modernists, his works were what?

Aesthetically conservative

What is the big contrast Frost includes in his poetry?

The contrast between a simple subject matter and the depth and ambiguity that Frost identifies within that subject

What are the origins of the poem “The Road Not Taken”

A small teasing joke Frost played on his friend, the British poet Edward Thomas

What is interesting about the lack of specificity in Frost’s statement “it has made all the difference”?

It highlights nuance, as Frost never said if it was a positive or negative difference

What is an issue with Frost calling that specific path “less traveled”?

Frost describes that both paths “equally lay”, so the choice of the "less traveled" path might not be accurate

What does the poem’s emphasis on the similarity of the paths turn readers’ attention to?

the speaker’s desire to turn the choice into something meaningful

How does John Savoie describe the poem?

“A projection into the future to look back up on the present as the past”