How to Read Poetry Like a Professor

however, the vast majority of readers of this poem has been and will continue to be blithely unaware that such a person as Edward Thomas ever existed, we need not adduce him as a key factor. S

Thomas’s agonizing over every decision can be seen as inspiring the speaker’s own challenges with decision making. S

Thomas could never, according to Frost, make up his mind when presented with two alternatives.

Frost said that he was inspired to write this poem by his neighbor and friend from the time when he resided in England, Edward Thomas, also a
poet of importance.

about the same”

grassy and wanted wear.”

From the first moment, Frost builds the poem around the difficulty of choice.

And many speakers are obviously characters, so they are easily discerned as having lives of their own.

we discuss poems, we refer to speakers rather than narrators, since poems do not inevitably involve the telling of a story but almost always have someone say something.

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair”