"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Robert Lee Frost was born in San Francisco, March 26, 1874 and died in Boston, January 29, 1963. He one of America's leading 20th-century poets and a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Although his verse forms are traditional, he was a pioneer in the interplay of rhythm and meter and in the poetic use of the vocabulary and inflections of everyday speech. His poetry is thus both traditional and experimental. .
After Frost's father died in 1885, the family left California and settled in Massachusetts. From 1897 to 1899 he attended Harvard College as a special student, but left without a degree. Over the next ten years he wrote (but rarely published) poems, operated a farm in Derry, New Hampshire (purchased for him by his grandfather), and supplemented his income by teaching. .
In 1912 he sold the farm and used the proceeds to take his family to England, where he could devote himself entirely to writing. His efforts to establish himself and his work were almost immediately successful. A Boy's Will was accepted by a London publisher and brought out in 1913, followed a year later by North of Boston. In 1924 he received a Pulitzer Prize in poetry for New Hampshire (1923). He received it again for Collected Poems (1930), A Further Range (1936), and A Witness Tree (1942). Over the years he received an unprecedented number and range of literary, academic, and public honors. .
The Road not Taken and many other poems of Robert Frost appeal to me. This one however would have to be the one that appeals to me the most. When I first read this poem, I liked it because of its free verse style (which I like) and its apparent simplicity, but, after much study, its true meaning became apparent. The obvious basic meaning is that the poem is about a person's choices in life. The narrator describes coming to a problem with the fork in the road.