This document provides a quick guide to understanding poetry by analyzing Robert Frost's well-known poem "The Road Not Taken". It instructs the reader to learn about the author and time period, read the poem, and consider how it relates to their own life. It then analyzes key images and themes in the poem about a traveler choosing between two diverging roads in a yellow wood.

1. A Quick and easy guide to
understanding poetry

2. 1. Learn about the
author/time period
2. Read through the poem
3. Ask: “How does this
relate to me?”

4. • One of the most famous American
poets
• He spent most of his life living in the
country in New England, and even
tried to be a farmer in his early
married life.
• He was famous for using his rural
surroundings as inspiration for his
poetry.

5. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be
one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked
down one as far as I couldTo where it
bent in the undergrowth; Then took
the other, as just as fair,And having
perhaps the better claimBecause it
was grassy and wanted wear,Though as
for that the passing thereHad worn
them really about the same,And both
that morning equally layIn leaves no
step had trodden black.Oh, I kept the
first for another day! Yet knowing how
way leads on to wayI doubted if I
should ever come back.I shall be
telling this with a sighSomewhere 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.

6. •woods, nature
•a man walking
•two roads

7. *What can these images be a
METAPHOR for?

8. *Have you ever had to choose
between two important things?

9. *Think of at least two times in your
life you have had to choose between
two important things.
*Discuss these times with your
partner:
* what happened afterwards?
*Are you glad you made that
choice? Why or Why not?

10. *Think of at least two times in your
life you have had to choose between
two important things.
*Discuss these times with your
partner:
* what happened afterwards?
*Are you glad you made that
choice? Why or Why not?