The Joke Not Gotten

 

The poet Robert Frost on his eighth brirthday. (Source.)

 

 I can't believe I was up until 4 in the morning, rhyming. I've enjoyed writing up my walks, but less so last night. It turns out trying to pastiche Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken", just because there's something or other you might have wanted to say about a specific set of crossroads, is not the best way of working out what that something actually is, and I realised today, one of the problems might have been that, while I know the poem, I wasn't entirely sure what it was about, and so I didn't know what I was I playing off. I did a little research then, and was relieved to discover I wasn't alone: According to this article, Frost had in fact written one of the most quoted poems in the English language as a mock-heroic joke for his friend Edward Thomas, but it had fallen completely flat, prompting Thomas to finally write back “I doubt if you can get anybody to see the fun of the thing without showing them & advising them which kind of laugh they are to turn on.” 

 ...

 The misunderstanding would rankle Frost for the rest of his life.

 This made me feel a lot better. And if you're reading this, the late Robert Frost, then hey, I know just how you feel, I've been where you are. I was there last night, mate. I cut a whole stanza out just before publishing it. Do you want to read- I'll get it–

 

    But then why the divergence? To walk through a wood?

    It wasn't a wood, it was five metres wide.

    You could hardly get lost, and so what was the good?

    I supposed, if you're feeling adventurous, you could

    At least have the trees either side.

 

 So, this was going to come after the first verse, then I realised it was basically filler – Is it a joke? Who knows, right? – I mean, my whole poem's basically filler, but I put the hours in, and it rhymes. So have this one on me, Bob. I feel so much closer to you right now.