Home » In Which We Roast The Hell Out Of Robert Frost, Who Deserves It: Tales From The Slack

In Which We Roast The Hell Out Of Robert Frost, Who Deserves It: Tales From The Slack

Robert Frost Eat It
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Idle Sentiments
Idle Sentiments
1 year ago

“I don’t think e.e cummings was his generation’s Skrillex.”

More like his generation’s “311”

Idle Sentiments
Idle Sentiments
1 year ago

Bravo!

Laurence Rogers
Laurence Rogers
1 year ago

Every Aussie knows there’s like, four poets:

-Banjo Patterson

-Henry Lawson

– That bloke who wrote ‘Said Henrahan’

– The rest

Peter d
Peter d
1 year ago

You are bitching about the wrong poet – at least Frost is accessible and you can make of his words what you want (I like to think he often wrote ironically) Thoreau is the poet who should be getting bashed – his poems are impenetrable and difficult to read and I think most people who quote him haven’t read any of his poems. And his quiet woods -within a dozen yards of active train tracks and his mom came and did his laundry every week – wuss.

Drew
Drew
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter d

Yeah, Thoreau makes me laugh because he pretended he was alone out in the woods while he living near everything and being utterly incapable of taking care of himself. He was a manchild that people took seriously somehow.

Last edited 1 year ago by Drew
SteamTroller45
SteamTroller45
1 year ago
Reply to  Drew

Not to mention a few blocks from Ralph Emerson’s house where he dined regularly. The original grifter hipster.

Pedro
Pedro
1 year ago

If there’s a fork in the road, take it. Yogi Berra

Jb996
Jb996
1 year ago

I’m intrigued by this new Poetopian website.

Poetry is taught so badly in the US. Half-literate English teachers, who
1) were taught one meaning, can’t read between the lines, and force that limited meaning onto poor students like some sort of mathematical fact.
2) believe poetry is only about emotion (be cause they can’t think critically themselves), and try to foist some sort of “passion” on students through rote memorization, and through “correcting” students when they just don’t care.

Skip Frost and Thoreau and start with Milne, Ronald Dahl , maybe Lewis Carroll (yes, they’re British, not American, but they’re great fun poets) But get the kids enjoying it! Teach how to play with language in novel and funny ways, then work up to the stuffy boring poetry.

Drew
Drew
1 year ago

Frost wrote normal, inoffensive pastorals. This is the Autopian. You need much weirder poets. But probably only short ones. I’m not going to suggest anyone go read Don Juan, Lord Byron’s 16,000 line satirical epic with an unreliable narrator.

Get the stuff that thumbs its nose at structure. The poems that put their lines in weird places to make their point. Get some of the redaction/erasure poetry. The absolute nonsense that makes you feel like you don’t understand anything.

Or, y’know, find some good car poetry.

TXJeepGuy
TXJeepGuy
1 year ago

All in favor of skipping the poem say I

Patrick George
Patrick George
1 year ago

2024 Toyota GR 86: The Paris Review Review

Geoff Buchholz
Geoff Buchholz
1 year ago
Reply to  Patrick George

As reprinted in “The French Dispatch.”

Stef Schrader
Stef Schrader
1 year ago

This was the boring part of English class to me. So many poets come off as just a bunch of pretentious old farts.

Give me the weird e.e. cummings stuff.

Drew
Drew
1 year ago

Two paths diverged in a yellow wood,
And–sorry, there’s also a third path
Being a city boy, I simply stood,
Calculating as best I could
Three choices with unknown math;

Then turned myself away from there,
Having perhaps no proper plan,
For three choices I could not bear
Though back home, I will swear
I became a decisive man

My city ass was made for streets
But I write pastoral verse
So I’ll put my pen to the sheets
And suggest I made no retreats;
My rural view is not a curse

I write this now and know not why
I write this with a certain sense
I could spend time in yellow wood
The forest seems a simple good
But the city has made a difference

(An alternate universe where Frost stuck to his city roots and also saw three paths. And was less strict in meter, because I am lazy.)

MATTinMKE
MATTinMKE
1 year ago
Reply to  Drew

Bravo.

Mike
Mike
1 year ago

Here’s the whole thing. And Torch is right. Two paths are the same, except for a bend in the undergrowth. But years later, the narrator knows he’ll be telling everyone, “I always knew which one was right!!” …even if it’s all a little bullshit.

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.

Laurence Rogers
Laurence Rogers
1 year ago
Reply to  Mike

What ticks me off is he says they were worn about the same, so the whole last line is just some wank

Ben
Ben
1 year ago

Fortunately, as an adult who no longer has to read it for class assignments I am free to pretend poetry does not exist. I even skip the poems and songs that sometimes get injected into novels because in my experience they never have any bearing on the story, they’re just the author showing off their poetic chops.

Don Mynack
Don Mynack
1 year ago
Reply to  Ben

There was a young man from Nantucket/

Double Wide Harvey Park
Double Wide Harvey Park
1 year ago
Reply to  Ben

That’s your loss, there’s some really lit shit out there

A. Barth
A. Barth
1 year ago

Two roads, both alike in dignity

In fair Woodland, where we lay our scene

From ancient indecision break to new direction

Where civil age makes civil aged unsure

In your face, Frosty 🙂

Dar Khorse
Dar Khorse
1 year ago

It’s not bullshit – you just didn’t understand it. He made a choice between equal options, but in his old age he will tell people he took the road less travelled-by and lay the credit (or blame) for however his life turned out on that singular choice. It’s about self-deception and the impermanence of memory.

(I’m purposefully engaging in the same self-deception by pretending that I always understood this poem. Thanks for pointing this out, Jason! This was a great eye-opener and I appreciate Frost all the more for finally seeing his point.)

Last edited 1 year ago by Dar Khorse
Jb996
Jb996
1 year ago
Reply to  Dar Khorse

It’s also about his regret that he could not travel both. That one equivalent decision, may define the rest of his life.

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:

Tim Connors
Tim Connors
1 year ago
Reply to  Jb996

Yeah. I also think there are lots of times when options available basically look the same, but then, looking back on how “way leads to way” the choice really did make all the difference. But not in any way that was understood at the time.

Crank Shaft
Crank Shaft
1 year ago

Why is it I feel the most of you have the most fun on Slack? 100% jealous.

Amberturnsignalsarebetter
Amberturnsignalsarebetter
1 year ago
Reply to  Matt Hardigree

In my workplace we have a dedicated #dad-jokes channel on Slack – it’s the only one I follow.

10001010
10001010
1 year ago
Reply to  Crank Shaft

We have Slack at our work too and it’s 0% fun.

MATTinMKE
MATTinMKE
1 year ago
Reply to  10001010

We used to have Slack. Now we’re stuck with Teams. Teams sucks.

10001010
10001010
1 year ago
Reply to  MATTinMKE

Teams does suck, especially for teams that don’t have Teams.

Dar Khorse
Dar Khorse
1 year ago
Reply to  MATTinMKE

Teams is (are?) the WORST.

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