Poetry is comfortable, in that, despite other uncontrollable forces you can always revisit a poem and the same words are there. This is how I felt when I revisited the poems from this weeks readings. Frost, Whitman, Yeats and Arnold are some of my favorite poets, and coming back to their poems have given me pleasure once again.
Some of my favorites from the reading include "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. Although this is a very canonized poem I find that with every reading its meaning of choice resonate with me. The iambic heart beat that pulses as you read makes the poem unassuming and natural, not forced. But, the idea that the speaker takes "the road not taken," always makes me think. I relate to the speaker in that we all look back on our lives and think about a choice we had to make. And with no way to go back and change those events we romanticize the choice, like the speaker, saying that he "took the one less traveled by/And that has made all the difference." We know the roads are the similar yet looking back this seemingly unimportant decision between roads that "equally lay/in leaves" has changed the speaker's life. I love the line that states "Oh, I kept the first for another day!" It is ironical in that the with the choice the speaker has made to take the other road, he will never be able to come back for the first. The bittersweet sensation of choice and remembrance is what makes this poem so memorable.
Matthew Arnold's poem "Dover Beach" is another poem that, through its beautiful imagery, remains a favorite for me. The first stanza brings up images of Dover Beach where the "cliffs of England stand,/glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay." Although it has been years since I have read this poem I still can recall the images it once created for me. Yet the message that despite the insecurity and inconstancy in the world the "Sea of Faith" offers stability. The speaker claims that the world which is "so various, so beautiful, so new" has "neither joy, nor love, nor light,/Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain." This can only be solved through the acceptance of the "ignorant armies" in faith; a very lovely idea.
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