{"id":4212,"date":"2015-10-01T20:39:29","date_gmt":"2015-10-02T01:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/?p=4212"},"modified":"2022-03-21T14:42:15","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T19:42:15","slug":"review-the-road-not-taken-and-other-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/01\/review-the-road-not-taken-and-other-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Road Not Taken and Other Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a style=\"float: left; padding-right: 5px;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/23398721\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-4215\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/TheRoadNotTaken.jpg?resize=100%2C151&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"The Road Not Taken and Other Poems\" width=\"100\" height=\"151\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/TheRoadNotTaken.jpg?resize=199%2C300&amp;ssl=1 199w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/TheRoadNotTaken.jpg?w=331&amp;ssl=1 331w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 100px) 100vw, 100px\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/23398721\">The Road Not Taken and Other Poems<\/a><br \/>\nby <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/7715\">Robert Frost<\/a><br \/>\nMy rating: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/1371891638\">4 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Robert Frost never leapt out at me during my sporadic forays into poetry. I was familiar with\u2014and moderately fond of\u2014a few of his most famous poems, and certainly the title poem of this collection, but never enough to seek out more. I picked up this collection because of David Orr&#8217;s introduction, which did not disappoint. I love an intro that can contextualize the author both historically and in terms of current sensibilities. Orr is erudite, efficient, and precise, with enough wit (and delicious dashes of pop culture) to avoid any whiff of pedantry.<\/p>\n<p>I intended to skim through the rest of it, but found myself sucked in. To my surprise, I was particularly drawn to his longer poems; I rarely have patience for these, preferring poetry that packs a quick wallop. The first that wowed me, and still my favorite in the collection, was &#8220;The Death of the Hired Man.&#8221; I read it, was stunned at how evocative it was, and reread it immediately\u2014I was there on the porch steps watching the conversation unfold. A 166 line masterpiece. Others that leapt out were &#8220;The Housekeeper,&#8221; &#8220;The Fear,&#8221; &#8220;Birches,&#8221; and &#8220;The Bonfire.&#8221; Each of them packed an emotional punch and grew with each rereading.<\/p>\n<p>My former English teachers may be relieved to know that I finally, a few decades late, get what all the Frost fuss is about.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/1371891638\">View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Road Not Taken and Other Poems by Robert Frost My rating: 4 of 5 stars Robert Frost never leapt out at me during my sporadic forays into poetry. I was familiar with\u2014and moderately fond of\u2014a few of his most famous poems, and certainly the title poem of this collection, but never enough to seek &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/01\/review-the-road-not-taken-and-other-poems\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Review: The Road Not Taken and Other Poems<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-4212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-books"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4212"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7514,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212\/revisions\/7514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}