The Road Not Taken

I'll be blunt: I don't really like poetry. I often find it pretentious and contrived, it doesn't speak to me, and I certainly can't write it.

In my creative writing class, we begin every class in or current poetry unit by watching a clip from the Favorite Poem Project. This has made me think about what I would say if I were asked what my favorite poem is. Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken immediately comes to mind- of all the poems I've ever read in school and even out, this is the only one that both makes sense, speaks to me, and sticks in my mind.

So here's my favorite poem: The Road Not Taken, by 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.