ROBERT FROST

Born on the day of March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, California, Robert Lee Frost was one of America’s most famous poets. Frost received four Pulitzer Prizes before he died in 1963. The first one in 1924 for New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes, then in1931 for Collected Poems, in 1937 for A Further Range, and the last on in 1943 for A Witness Tree. Married to Elinor Miriam White, who was his co-valedictorian at high school, he lived in various locations throughout his life, in San Francisco, California for the first ten years of his life, then moved to New England where he lived most of his years; he also lived in Great Britain for three years where he met Edward, T. E. Hulme and Ezra Pound. Pound would become the first American to write a review of Frost's work; it was also in England that Frost wrote some of his best work. Robert Frost attended Dartmouth College, where he stayed for a little over a semester, and also Harvard University for two years.
Robert Frost grew up in a state of turmoil. From his tumultuous childhood right up until his death, Frost was a character who could speak at Harvard and live on a farm in New Hampshire. He could dazzle the brightest students with poetic ingenious, but boil life down to, “It’s hard to get into this world and hard to get out of it. And what’s in between doesn’t make much sense. If that sounds pessimistic, let it stand”. Robert Frost’s poems “Mending Wall” and “The Road Not Taken” both exemplify the struggle between individual autonomy and the confines that society puts on it through deceivingly simple speech. Frost specifically deals with the idea that life is no more than a series of relationships and choices, which are never simple to discern. Frost’s collections of work have not always been considered groundbreaking, for his first book of poems was published when he was forty.

1) As a four-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Robert Frost writes poems that reflect love, loathing, and the splendors of nature in vast collections, variable literature books, and a variety of writings by other authors. 2) He reflects parts of his life in his work giving it an autobiographical feeling. 3) His older publications such as Frost’s Early Works usually include poems such as “Fire and Ice,” “Mowing,” “The Road Not Taken,” and many others that thoroughly exemplify his three main themes. 4) But Frost does not just give you his poems, he emphasizes them to you.

The road not taken is basically about a traveller who has come to a fork in road and he must choose which way to go as he could only choose one road. In stanza one, the narrator told us that he was on a physical journey and that he was confronted with a choice of roads. He could only choose one road and he decided to choose one.

Life consists of making an infinite number of choices. Whether one decides to what to eat, what to wear, who to like, where to go, life consists of making decisions. In his poem "The Road Not Taken," Robert Frost, writes a poem of consisting of twenty short lines, that acknowledges an aspect of life: decision making. He uses the character of a traveler and creates a setting of past, present and future. The comparison of two roads in the middle of a "yellow wood" (1), represents many of the life choices that individuals make. Robert Frost emphasize the importance of the decision we as individuals make, given no right answer, mold us into who we are.
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / And sorry I could not travel both." (1-2). Robert Frost begins this poem by simply saying, there's two ordinary roads in a wood forest. These two roads that are mention can be interpreted as a stage in life in which one needs to make a decision. This means that this poem also includes decision-making.

Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," can be understood in various ways. The mood, attitude, and mindset of the reader predispose their thoughts towards the poem's true meaning. The title of the Frost's poem suggests that it is about decisions and obstacles in life and how people should handle them. Frost is voicing his opinion, saying that whatever path or decision making we make or do, one day, will be the key factor in your future tomorrow and thereafter. Almost every human being experiences life's bumpy road journey and Frost indicates in his poem that there are never just one single path to take; instead it is like a complex maze.
A traveler comes upon "two roads diversified in a yellow wood" (Frost 719 ). Frost indicates that it is a cross road in his life and he must chose one way or another. The option of choosing both roads is not there because it is not possible, so the traveler must decide how he wants to live the remainder of his life and choose that path.

In stanza two, the narrator explain his decision to take the one road over the other due to its fresher appearance as it was grassy even thought the narrator points out that there was little differences between the two roads.
In stanza three the narrator started to regret the decision that he made. He regretted taking the rods that he chose and he wished that he could change his decision and chose the other roads instead. He realised that he made the wrong decision. In the poem "The Road Not Taken" author Robert Frost uses the simple image of a road to represent a person's journey through life. A well-established poet, Frost does an excellent job of transforming a seemingly common road to one of great importance, which along the way helps one identify who they really are. This poem is one of self-discovery. Frost incorporates strong elements of poetry such as the speaker, the audience, tone, diction, imagery as well as figurative language to help create one of his most well known pieces about the human experience. The main theme of the poem that Frost attempts to convey is how important the decisions that one makes can be, and how it can affect one's future.
The Road Not Taken is told as a first-person narrative. The narrator tells us the he is faced with "two roads diverged in a yellow wood" (l. 1) and must choose between the two.

“The Road Not Taken”

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that, the passing there Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. 20

Summary

The speaker stands in the woods, considering a fork in the road. Both ways are equally worn and equally overlaid with un-trodden leaves. The speaker chooses one, telling himself that he will take the other another day. Yet he knows it is unlikely that he will have the opportunity to do so. And he admits that someday in the future he will recreate the scene with a slight twist: He will claim that he took the less-traveled road.
Form

“The Road Not Taken” consists of four stanzas of five lines. The rhyme scheme is ABAAB; the rhymes are strict and masculine, with the notable exception of the last line (we do not usually stress the -ence of difference). There are four stressed syllables per line, varying on an iambic tetrameter base.

Commentary

This has got to be among the best-known, most-often-misunderstood poems on the planet. Several generations of careless readers have turned it into a piece of Hallmark happy-graduation-son, seize-the-future puffery. Cursed with a perfect marriage of form and content, arresting phrase wrought from simple words, and resonant metaphor, it seems as if “The Road Not Taken” gets memorized without really being read. For this it has died the cliché’s un-death of trivial immortality.

But you yourself can resurrect it from zombie-hood by reading it—not with imagination, even, but simply with accuracy. Of the two roads the speaker says “the passing there / Had worn them really about the same.” In fact, both roads “that morning lay / In leaves no step had trodden black.” Meaning: Neither of the roads is less traveled by. These are the facts; we cannot justifiably ignore the reverberations they send through the easy aphorisms of the last two stanzas.

One of the attractions of the poem is its archetypal dilemma, one that we instantly recognize because each of us encounters it innumerable times, both literally and figuratively. Paths in the woods and forks in roads are ancient and deep-seated metaphors for the lifeline, its crises and decisions. Identical forks, in particular, symbolize for us the nexus of free will and fate: We are free to choose, but we do not really know beforehand what we are choosing between. Our route is, thus, determined by an accretion of choice and chance, and it is impossible to separate the two.

This poem does not advise. It does not say, “When you come to a fork in the road, study the footprints and take the road less traveled by” (or even, as Yogi Berra enigmatically quipped, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it”). Frost’s focus is more complicated. First, there is no less-traveled road in this poem; it isn’t even an option. Next, the poem seems more concerned with the question of how the concrete present (yellow woods, grassy roads covered in fallen leaves) will look from a future vantage point.

The ironic tone is inescapable: “I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence.” The speaker anticipates his own future insincerity—his need, later on in life, to rearrange the facts and inject a dose of Lone Ranger into the account. He knows that he will be inaccurate, at best, or hypocritical, at worst, when he holds his life up as an example. In fact, he predicts that his future self will betray this moment of decision as if the betrayal were inevitable. This realization is ironic and poignantly pathetic. But the “sigh” is critical. The speaker will not, in his old age, merely gather the youth about him and say, “Do what I did, kiddies. I stuck to my guns, took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Rather, he may say this, but he will sigh first; for he won’t believe it himself. Somewhere in the back of his mind will remain the image of yellow woods and two equally leafy paths.

Ironic as it is, this is also a poem infused with the anticipation of remorse. Its title is not “The Road Less Traveled” but “The Road Not Taken.” Even as he makes a choice (a choice he is forced to make if does not want to stand forever in the woods, one for which he has no real guide or definitive basis for decision-making), the speaker knows that he will second-guess himself somewhere down the line—or at the very least he will wonder at what is irrevocably lost: the impossible, unknowable Other Path. But the nature of the decision is such that there is no Right Path—just the chosen path and the other path. What are sighed for ages and ages hence are not so much the wrong decisions as the moments of decision themselves—moments that, one atop the other, mark the passing of a life. This is the more primal strain of remorse.

Thus, to add a further level of irony, the theme of the poem may, after all, be “seize the day.” But a more nuanced carpe diem, if you please.

SANDRA CISNEROS

Sandra Cisneros is a very good poet, but in order to understand her works we have to know something about her life. In Cisneros' literary works the most important characteristic we should be concerned about, is that she writes about conflicts and desires of her own life and culture. A very interesting poem of her that I would like to write about and make some investigation is “My Wicked Wicked Ways.” I would present a few areas of analysis so that it is better for us to understand this literary work. “My Wicked Wicked Ways,” what can we say about this title? The meaning is simple; “my bad, unpleasant, ways,” but what about the significance, what is Cisneros trying to say with this? What Sandra Cisneros is trying to bring up with this title is to present us with her past, how and what she lived in her life. With this title, she is expressing her problems and her way of living, in this case we could see the immorality, and the unfaithfulness of her father. She is trying to present to us some of her relatives' conflicts in their lives, her bad, not moral, unpleasant ways of living. What about the theme? What can we say about it? What is the theme? Well, the theme in this poem is the infidelity, and what the speaker is trying to say is that in some marriages or in some families, the infidelity occurs and instead of taking an action, they just have a discussion about it and with the passing of days or years, she/he forgets it. In others words they live with it for the rest of their lives without mentioning it again. With this we can say that what the poem means is that sometimes you have problems that you have to live with, without taking any kind of action, you have to take them to your grave. Some people do this in order to continue a “normal life” because maybe they cannot survive by themselves, although one with time can overcome it. In order to create this entire atmosphere, a kind of resentfulness, Cisneros used a lot of adjectives and puts the sentences in such a way that it creates the atmosphere. The poem paraphrased into my own words says like this:

This person here is my dad.
My father is a youthful person.
He looks similar to the movie guy, Errol Flynn.
My father has on a hat that falls over one eye, an outfit that looks nice on him, and wide jeans.

He also has a pair of terrible shoes,
Two-toned ones that my mother does not like.

This person here is my mom.
My mother is not weeping.
She cannot see through the lens because the sun is shiny.
A woman, that my dad knows, is not in this place.
She will arrive later.

My mom will get angry.
She will turn red and throw a shoe.
My dad will not say anything.
Later on all of us will not remember it.
The days will go by.
My mother will not talk about it.

I am the one she is carrying.
I am an infant.
My mother does not know
I will be mean.

What is the importance of the last four lines? What is the speaker saying about herself? Why is she saying this? The importance of the last four lines is that she explains that the events that she narrates in her poem happened during her life. In her last two line the author say “She does not know, I will turn bad” (Cisneros 160) that can mean that the author because of her father's past actions will turn bad, she will be different from what others expect her to be. These areas of analysis will help us understand the poem and what Sandra Cisneros is trying to say in it.
In Cisneros' 1984 collection of poetry, My Wicked Wicked Ways, the young voice of Mango Street coexists with that of a grown woman/poet struggling with her contradictory desires. The narrator of these poems wants to be independent and an artist. While she takes many lovers, she prefers to "dance alone." As Theresa Martínez notes, "Poetry—both painful and miraculous emerges from a lonely and sometimes isolated self who is, at the same time, truly her core being, a woman who is well worth knowing for her own sake."

Although Cisneros is noted primarily for her fiction, her poetry has also garnered attention. In My Wicked Wicked Ways, her third volume of verse, Cisneros writes about her native Chicago, her travels in Europe, and, as reflected in the title, sexual guilt resulting from her strict Catholic upbringing. A collection of sixty poems, each of which resemble a short story, this work further evidences Cisneros's penchant for merging various genres. Gary Soto explained: "Cisneros's poems are intrinsically narrative, but not large, meandering paragraphs. She writes deftly with skill and idea, in the 'show-me-don't-tell-me' vein, and her points leave valuable impressions." In her poetry, as in all her works, Cisneros incorporates Hispanic dialect, impressionistic metaphors, and social commentary in ways that reveal the fears and doubts unique to Hispanic women. She stated: "If I were asked what it is I write about, I would have to say I write about those ghosts inside that haunt me, that will not let me sleep, of that which even memory does not like to mention. … Perhaps later there will be a time to write by inspiration. In the meantime, in my writing as well as in that of other Chicanas and other women, there is the necessary phase of dealing with those ghosts and voices most urgently haunting us, day by day."

Sandra Cisneros, who has been well-decorated for the unique voice first heard in her fiction—THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET and WOMAN HOLLERING CREEK AND OTHER STORIES—reveals in MY WICKED WICKED WAYS that she was working her magic first in poetry. There is little of her signature blend of English and Spanish in this collection, though several pieces tell of growing up Chicana, one rebellious girl among six brothers.

The book’s first section captures the guileless sing-song of a schoolgirl. There’s a cold baby in a satin box, “like a valentine,”in the corner of Lucy’s pink living room, and there’s sick, sad Abuelito, “who used to laugh like the letter k.”
By the second section, the girl has become a lover, “thenotorious/ one/ leg wrapped/ around/ the door.” Her girlfriend chugs Pabst in redneck bars, and her father warns her that a Sandra Cisneros in Mexico “was arrested for audacious crimes/ that began by disobeying fathers.”
The third section is a handful of postcards from exotic places. She walks alone under stars through a field of poppies in the south of France. She muses to lovers, and to lovers who might have been. She drags furniture out of a burning house on the island of Hydra, and praises that “paradise of symmetry,” the derriere of Michelangelo’s “David.”
The book closes with a series of love poems that are richly sensual and often furious. The affair, with its many good-byes, is angular and adulterous: “you who never admitted a public grace./ Weof the half-dark who were unbrave.”
Cisneros has written a prefatory poem that is worth the price of the book, a terrific psychic summary of the years that created these poems. “I chucked the life/ my father’d plucked for me,” she explains, “ . . . winched the door with poetry and fled.”