The Road Not Taken Again and Again and Again and...

I was in Starbucks talking to a woman about her alma mater, a small liberal arts school, and she said smugly that going there had “made all the difference.”  She was confident that I would get the reference to Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” with its ending:  “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --/I took the one less traveled by,/And that has made all the difference.”  And I did.  And I should have just let the conversation continue on easily.  But I didn’t.  I couldn’t help saying, ‘Yeah, I ordered a large coffee.   And that has made all the difference.”  She looked at me puzzled.  Was I mocking her?  Well, no.  And kind of.

A small coffee would have made all the difference as well.  Every choice – large and small -- makes all the difference.  This is revelation, truism, and banality.  The statement that feels epic:  The Sun Will Rise Today! – and it is epic.   What a miracle a sunrise is.  But the statement itself is about making a statement.

“The Road Not Taken” has become a clarion call for not following the crowd.  I’ve heard it in speeches, conversations, and years ago saw Monsters.com use it as a commercial.  Break away.  Don’t go where most people do.  Yet there are multiple problems with this.  For one, to take a path is to remain on a worn trail that others have gone.  You’re still not a wild bushwacking rebel.  For another, it’s funny that people keep turning to the same lines to trumpet difference and pseudo-individuality.  The paradox of poetry as bumper sticker anthem.  (I once saw Whitman’s “barbaric yawp” on the back of a car, and I want to believe that the owner was being ironic.  I want to, but . . . )  Most significantly, as many have pointed out, there is a difference between what the speaker says he or she is doing and what the situation actually is.  The paths are equally worn.  No one has trod either that morning.  The choice is between two ways that look similar, but the narrator realizes that “ages hence,” whatever choice he or she makes will be justified with the thought “I – I took the road less travelled by.”

The poem ends up being a complex assessment of human psychology and justification.  We have to make choices.  Some are equivalent – Pepsi or Coke -- but we’ll come up with reasons later to feel like we did the right thing.

I too went to a small liberal arts college.  The woman and I took the same path and read the same poems and buy coffee at the same places, but I – I interpret the experience different.  I -- I don’t agree with the mainstream.  I -- I don’t give an easy response in conversation.  I . . .

Frost has our number.

The Taxi Driver Who Quoted Poe

Years ago, I had a landlord, Lou, who worked as a night time taxi driver. During the day, he wore golf shirts and slacks. When he went to do his shift, he would put on a leather vest, jeans, leather fingerless gloves, and a wide-brimmed hat. “It’s important to look like someone who you shouldn’t mess with,” he told me. He was a big guy with a big black mustache, and he looked imposing (except when he was walking his wife’s tiny toy poodles Tinky Winky and Teeny Weeny. He was convinced that she had chosen the dogs and the names to embarrass him, but although he grumbled, he loved them).

Lou knew the fastest way to get around the city which, he would point out, wasn’t always the way you wanted to take. You didn’t want to scare tourists by going into some areas, so when a fare got in, you had to figure out who they were and the best route to take them.

Lou also knew hundreds of poems. Before he drove a cab, he was a long-haul truck driver, and he would spend the miles memorizing poetry, especially William Butler Yeats. Once he picked up two English professors at the airport. He heard one of them misquote “The Raven.” He corrected him, and then said he knew the whole poem. “I bet you a hundred bucks, you don’t,” the professor said. Lou took the bet, started reciting, and, at the end of the ride, the guy had to give him a hundred dollars. But, Lou liked to point out, “He didn’t give me a tip.”

Inspired by Lou I typed out short poems on index cards to learn while running. I found not only did the run seem to go faster, but I had to start making decisions about what poems I wanted to memorize. Which did I feel were worth the effort? Which sounded good? Which had something to offer? Suddenly, I had to come up with a personal criteria. I had no intention of reciting these to other people (which, unless you’re Lou or have an Irish accent, can come off as either pretentious or a party trick). These were only for me. They had to be short, they had to speak to me, and they had to be enjoyable to know.

I still have a stack of some of them in my desk drawer: Robert Frost “Fire and Ice”; Gwendolyn Brooks, “The Bean Eaters,” Gary Snyder, “I Went into the Maverick Bar,” Robert Penn Warren, “Treasure Hunt,” Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays.” And, although I no longer know them all by heart, I still carry many of the lines with me.