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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Jazzo's lovely "Poetry" thread prompts me to start two spin-off threads. I do so with some trepidation, unsure whether they will be of interest, but trusting that I will be forgiven if in error.
The other thread I am starting solicits poetry of a lighter vein.
We have provided some of our favorite poems. Shall we discuss at least one of them? For tis purpose I repeat here the lovely poem with which Jazz-o opened his thread. To get the ball rolling, I ask the significant of:
1) the wood being a "yellow" wood
2) the author's sudden shift of his perspective (in the last stanza) from future tense to past tense.
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The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost
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;
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,
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.
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.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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yellow wood ... harvest time; maturity; no longer young; leaves still yellowing, but not fading or brown
Past tense ... this is a symbolic account of what happened to the speaker in the poem
Future tense at the end ... this is a story that will bear repeating because the choice that was
made was a pivotal one; the sigh is not so much of regret, but wonderment of what may have
happened had the choice been different. However, it is clear that the choice that was made
produced a direction both inexorable and determining.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I think this line is unutterably sad: I doubted if I should ever come back. I want to know where the other path went, and what was on it, during the going? I think I've posted something to this effect before--that I regret that I can't live sort of "parallel lives"; that is, I want to know what is happening everywhere. But if I travel to there, wherever there is, then I'll miss what's happening here while I'm gone. So I wish, for example, that I could lead my life here, and at the same time, live a life in, say, England, New Zealand, and Antarctica. If a penguin jumps off a rock in New Zealand, I want to see it--he'll never do exactly that jump again. But had I gone off looking at penguins (or whatever), I'd have missed my children's first steps (or whatever). SIGH! I suppose we're just not meant to do/know/see everything, but...I want to!! I sure would love it if someone would invent teleportation or something in my lifetime.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Jackie, but we are fortunate in what we can see in nature videos, photographs on the Internet, books, magazines. The information age has provided opportunities to expand our consciousness if we don't lose our souls in the search.
I heard a lecture by a naturalist a few years back, and he was lamenting the fact that much we see in the wildlife programs gives a very false impression of the life of the naturalist. He said that the chance encounters naturalists spend months seeking appear to be easily accessible because of these programs. He was expressing the life of the naturalist--those four hours a day walking (a minimum) that Thoreau wrote about in something of his I read long ago about walking.
I'm simply grateful for the largesse we know, and the chance for inspiration to get up off my duff and take a tromp through the woods, after deer season, of course!
Hope you have many happy hours watching those foot steps and seeing some pretty remarkable penguin programs.
Best regards,
Woodward
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I think this line is unutterably sad: I doubted if I should ever come back.
Not sad, surely, but realistic. To me, this poem underlines the futility of wishing for what cannot be achieved, and to accept that one is continually making choices and that one is continually having to accept the consequences. In some ways, this is as fatalistic as Omar Khayyam - perhaps that is why an Autumn, rather than a Spring setting is used? Autumn is the time of fruit which will become the next stage of development, just as your choice of road leads to the next fork where you must make a decision and lead on to the next stage of your life.
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Carpal Tunnel
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gee WW i read Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,, and saw the poet writing of his youth-- when the wood was still yellow, not yet full green, early in the spring..
by the last stanza, the wood is longer yellow.. (and the writer is no longer young)
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
as for regrets about choices made..
i guess i am luckier than some.. i have very few regrets.. i have made many mistakes in my life, and these have cost me dearly-- but a chance to redo? I am where i am now, because of the some total of these parts..
My life might have been different-- but i don't know if it would have been better.. i sometimes think of my self as a beautiful shaped and polished stone.. (a diamond)
A diamond doesn't get that beautiful shape and shine sitting in the water, and having a gentle flow.. to get a sparkling diamond.. you need to press it hard to the wheel, where diamond grit, the hardest of grits, grinds away, and wear it down.. you need to split the stone, polish the stone-- reshape it.. its hard work.. but in the end.. you have something beautiful
i might have started out, a small flawed diamond -- and my life has not always been easy.. Oh, but now, i am multifaceted, and sparkle more brightly than you can imagine!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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DubDub (& Rhuby), you both make excellent points. I would like to clarify that I do celebrate the world I live in, and appreciate the glimpses I get into others' worlds--of which this board provides a wonderful one. And I have long accepted the fact that each choice I make sends me on an irrevocable path, for the better or for the worse. I did not mean to give the impression that most of my time is spent wailing and moaning over what cannot be. But there is a small part of me that surfaces occasionally, crying, "If only...".
Now...Helen, thank you so much for your post! It was wonderful to me, to learn another way to view this poem (and thank you Keiva, for this thread, by the way)--I nearly always tend to view things in a concrete way, at least at first; probably due to my habit of hurrying through to get to "the point". I often do not think about the process being the point--a pretty immature view, I do know. I love your image of yourself as a polished stone, having been through the rough-and-tumble before achieving this state. Reminds me of the purification/refining by fire discussion. I wish I had a similar self-image. I have no idea of where I'd put myself in comparison--probably still undiscovered, let alone polished.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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of Troy:
Interesting to consider your reading of the yellow. However, no feet had trodden black the leaves on the path...
That would further indicate that the season is fall. The leaves that have fallen have not been walked over to the extent that they, through wear and weather, have not yet turned black as leaves do later in winter.
In spring, when leaves are budding out, they bud out, true, in pale chartreuse (some species), pale whitish green (white oaks), even deep red (the red maples). I don't think a yellow wood is as likely in spring as in fall.
Just my take (and respectfully),
DubD
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Carpal Tunnel
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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,
I have always taken this poem to be a metaphor for individualism and non-conformity...taking the least traveled road. Of course, this theme is deeply imbedded in New England's spirit and psyche going back to the Transcendentalists, its greatest champion being Ralph Waldo Emerson (if you haven't read his essay Self-Reliance, you should). But now I look at the italicized portion of the above stanza and wonder if, from a more mature perspective, the more rugged path is less relevant than the fact that he chose the right path for him at the time. The more traveled path would have be a mistake for him at that particular juncture, but perhaps it would have been the correct choice for someone else, as long as it was their truest path.
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