The most popular poem by a British writer proved to be Rudyard Kipling's indestructible If, a regular poll-topper in surveys in Britain. Submissions ranged across more than 2,500 years of verse, ranging from Sappho to Seamus Heaney. In addition to The Road Not Taken, Frost's Stopping By Woods on A Snowy Evening also wins a place in the top five.Īlthough most of the poems nominated by American poetry lovers were by US authors, the project placed no bar on the nationality of respondents' choices. If our generation decides the young can do without great works of art, we will be cursed."Īmerica's favourite poem, on the basis of Mr Pinsky's bulging postbag, is the characteristically reflective and solitary The Road Not Taken, written by the San Francisco-born poet Robert Frost, one of the laureate's predecessors.įrost, who at the age of 86 read one of his poems at President Kennedy's inauguration in January 1961, maintains an awesome grip on the American poetic imagination nearly 40 years after his death. "My dearest hope is that this will affect the way poetry is taught in school. "The archive is dramatic and gripping beyond my hopes and expectations," said Mr Pinsky, who steps down as poet laureate next month. It presents a narrator who is recalling his journey through the forest when he had to choose between two divergent roads. This poem was used as an opening poem of Robert Frost’s collection Mountain Interval in 1916. It was published in The Atlantic Monthly in August 1915. Last week, he presented the Library of Congress with a video and audio archive, in which 100 Americans from all walks of life are heard and seen reading their choices. The Road Not Taken is a poem by Robert Frost. Mr Pinsky and his colleague Maggie Dietz have collected many of the suggestions into a bestselling book, Americans' Favourite Poems, which is already into a fourth reprinting. Though submissions have come from every state in the union, the muse seems to be strongest in the north-eastern US, with New York and Massachusetts supplying the most responses to Mr Pinsky's appeal. The Favourite Poem Project, which Mr Pinsky has coordinated through the Library of Congress, where the US laureate is based, has yielded a massive and diverse archive, with contributors ranging in age from four to 99.
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