Frost’s early poems, selected by poet David Orr for the centennial of “The Road Not Taken” A Penguin Classics Deluxe edition For one hundred years, Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” has enchanted and challenged readers with its deceptively simple premise—a person reaches a fork in the road, facing a choice full of doubt and possibility. The Road Not Taken and Other Poems presents Frost’s best-loved poem along with other works from his brilliant early years, including such poems as “After Apple-Picking,” “The Oven Bird,” and “Mending Wall.” Award-winning poet and critic David Orr’s introduction discusses why Frost remains so central (if often misunderstood) in American culture and how the beautiful intricacy of his poetry keeps inviting generation after generation to search for meaning in his work. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Originally published as: Mountain interval. New York: H. Holt and Co., 1916.

A cultural “biography” of Robert Frost’s beloved poem, arguably the most popular piece of literature written by an American “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood . . .” One hundred years after its first publication in August 1915, Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” is so ubiquitous that it’s easy to forget that it is, in fact, a poem. Yet poetry it is, and Frost’s immortal lines remain unbelievably popular. And yet in spite of this devotion, almost everyone gets the poem hopelessly wrong. David Orr’s The Road Not Taken dives directly into the controversy, illuminating the poem’s enduring greatness while revealing its mystifying contradictions. Widely admired as the poetry columnist for The New York Times Book Review, Orr is the perfect guide for lay readers and experts alike. Orr offers a lively look at the poem’s cultural influence, its artistic complexity, and its historical journey from the margins of the First World War all the way to its canonical place today as a true masterpiece of American literature. “The Road Not Taken” seems straightforward: a nameless traveler is faced with a choice: two paths forward, with only one to walk. And everyone remembers the traveler taking “the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” But for a century readers and critics have fought bitterly over what the poem really says. Is it a paean to triumphant self-assertion, where an individual boldly chooses to live outside conformity? Or a biting commentary on human self-deception, where a person chooses between identical roads and yet later romanticizes the decision as life altering? What Orr artfully reveals is that the poem speaks to both of these impulses, and all the possibilities that lie between them. The poem gives us a portrait of choice without making a decision itself. And in this, “The Road Not Taken” is distinctively American, for the United States is the country of choice in all its ambiguous splendor. Published for the poem’s centennial—along with a new Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Frost’s poems, edited and introduced by Orr himself—The Road Not Taken is a treasure for all readers, a triumph of artistic exploration and cultural investigation that sings with its own unforgettably poetic voice.

Includes 38 nonsense verses and parodies: "The Walrus and the Carpenter," "Father William," "My Fancy," "A Sea Dirge," "Hiawatha's Photographing," "The Mad Gardener's Song," "Poeta Fit, non Nascitur," and many others.

Includes the memorable "The Skeleton in Armor," "The Arsenal at Springfield," "Mezzo Cammin," "The Rhyme of Sir Christopher" (from Tales of a Wayside Inn), "Aftermath" and "Divina Commedia." Cambridge Edition.

Treasury of verse by the great Victorian poet, including the long narrative poem, Enoch Arden, plus "The Lady of Shalott," "The Charge of the Light Brigade," selections from The Princess, "Maud" and "The Brook," more.

This exceptional collection contains a rich cross-section of Lawrence's work, including the title poem, "A Collier's Wife," "Monologue of a Mother," "Fireflies in the Corn," and several others.

More than 75 works, including a number of Lindsay's most popular performance pieces, "The Congo" and "The Santa Fe Trail" among them, reprinted with his own directions for recitation. Also included: "The Jingo and the Minstrel," subtitled "An Argument for the Maintenance of Peace and Goodwill with the Japanese People"; more.

Includes the title poem about the nature of the universe and mankind's place in it, as well as such writings as "The Rape Of The Lock" and "Ode On Solitude."