Stephani's+Design


 * "The Road Not Taken" Lesson Plan**

>>>> That unless it's out of sheer >>>> Mischief and a little queer >>>> It wont prove a bore to hear."
 * Students will come to class having already read the poem.
 * Play students a recording of [|Frost reading the poem.]
 * Ask students to consider whether hearing the poet read his poem adds anything to their own readings of the poem.
 * Students might notice how Frost emphasizes the meter of the poem.
 * Students might notice how phrases which seemed less noticeable in their own reading are drawn out and emphasized in Frost's own reading.
 * I'm thinking particularly of: "as just as fair"
 * "//Ohhhh//, I kept the first for another day"
 * Does hearing Frost reading the poem bring up any visceral emotions.
 * [|Play it again.]
 * Now introduce the idea that this poem has been called "the best example in all American poetry of a wolf in sheep's clothing."
 * What Frost said about his poem: "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem – very tricky."
 * Introduce the idea that there might be more than one reading of the poem. Ask students to consider what the more obvious meaning would be.
 * In this reading of the poem the poem is about non-conformism. It is a self-congratulatory ode to taking "the [road] less traveled by."
 * Bring up how this poem is often misremembered as "the path less taken."
 * Bring up how this irritated Frost--include the story about him loudly interjecting that it is //"road"// not //"path."//
 * What are the different connotations of "road" versus "path."
 * Ask students to consider why reading the poem as an ode to non-conformism might be a less than careful reading.
 * If necessary, prompt students to consider //when// the road is definitively stated as having been "less taken"
 * "Somewhere ages and ages hence"
 * and how do the roads appear to begin with?
 * "Though as for that the passing there . . . ."
 * Introduce the idea that a more careful reading of this poem might produce and ironic reading in which the poem is more about personal myth-making than inspirational non-conformism.
 * [|Play it again.]
 * Story time: tell students about Frost and his friend Edward Thomas, the idea that the poem was for Frost a kind of affectionate joke on his friend, but that he was disappointed that Thomas did not recognize himself in the poem.
 * Frost's quote: "I'll bet not half a dozen people can tell you who was hit and where he was hit in my Road Not Taken," and he characterized himself in that poem particularly as "fooling my way along."
 * Thomas's quote: "I doubt if you can get anybody to see the fun of the thing without showing them and advising them which kind of laugh they are to turn on."
 * [|And though this sort of advice went exactly contrary to Frost's notion of how poetry should work, he did on occasion warn his audiences and other readers that it was a tricky poem. Yet it became a popular poem for very different reasons than what Thomas referred to as "the fun of the thing."]
 * Quote from Frost's notebooks:
 * "Nothing ever so sincere
 * **The Big Pay-Off:** What does all this mean? Is this poem, as Thomas thought, a kind of failure, in that so many people enjoy the poem without seeing "the fun of the thing" as Frost conceived of it? What about the visceral emotional response students may have had when first listening to the poem? What was that based upon? What happens when we [|listen to the poem one more time]?
 * Introduce the idea of a reading which holds in tension the more easily realized poignant aspects of the poem
 * "how way leads on to way"
 * with the ironic reading of the poem.
 * Ask students what they feel they would have missed had they just been instructed to think about their personal reaction to the poem without having to think about if further. Discussion: would they have preferred that? Why or why not?