”It stag­gered me to think that perhaps I had always missed what made poetry poetry.”

This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Literary History newsletter—sign up here.

Robert Frost’s most famous poem, “The Road Not Taken,” “has confused audiences literally from the beginning,” David Orr has written.

In the spring of 1915, Frost sent an envelope to Edward Thomas that contained only one item: a draft of “The Road Not Taken,” under the title “Two Roads.” According to Lawrance Thompson, Frost had been inspired to write the poem by Thomas’s habit of regretting whatever path the pair took during their long walks in the countryside—an impulse that Frost equated with the romantic predisposi­tion for “crying over what might have been.” Frost, Thompson writes, believed that his friend “would take the poem as a gen­tle joke and would protest, ‘Stop teasing me.’” 

That wasn’t what occurred. Instead, Thomas sent Frost an admiring note in which it was evident that he had as­sumed the poem’s speaker was a version of Frost, and that the final line was meant to be read as generations of high school valedictorians have assumed. The sequence of their correspondence on the poem is a miniature version of the confusion “The Road Not Taken” would provoke in millions of subsequent readers:

1. Frost sends the poem to Thomas, with no clarify­ing text, in March or April of 1915.

2. Thomas responds shortly thereafter in a letter now evidently lost but referred to in later corre­spondence, calling the poem “staggering” but missing Frost’s intention.

3. Frost responds in a letter (the date is unclear) to ask Thomas for further comment on the poem, hoping to hear that Thomas understood that it was at least in part addressing his own behavior.

4. Thomas responds in a letter dated June 13, 1915, explaining that “the simple words and unemphatic rhythms were not such as I was accustomed to expect great things, things I like, from. It stag­gered me to think that perhaps I had always missed what made poetry poetry.” It’s still clear that Thomas doesn’t quite understand the poem’s stance or Frost’s “joke” at his expense.

5. Frost writes back on June 26, 1915: “Methinks thou strikest too hard in so small a matter. A tap would have settled my poem. I wonder if it was because you were trying too much out of regard for me that you failed to see that the sigh [in line 16] was a mock sigh, hypo­critical for the fun of the I don’t suppose I was ever sorry for any­ thing I ever did except by assumption to see how it would feel.”

6. Thomas responds on July 11, 1915: “You have got me again over the Path not taken & no mistake . . . I doubt if you can get anybody to see the fun of the thing without showing them & advising them which kind of laugh they are to turn on.”

The poem was published in the August 1915 edition of The Atlantic Monthly, along with “Birches” and “The Sound of Trees.” If you, like Thomas, have found yourself confused, and would like to understand this American classic better, you can read Orr’s full unpacking here.