wit of, 80

“Frost, Robert” (public persona), 21–22, 40–46

allure of masks to, 140

“monster myth” of, 52–53, 54, 55–57, 60, 63

in need of rescuing, 53–55, 63

posthumous impressions of, 49

as public property, 61

Gazzaniga, Michael, 120–23, 125

“Gift Outright, The,” 48

Godfather, The, 106

Google Insights for Search, 5–7, 10

Graham, Rev. Billy, 106

Grail quest, 93–94, 96

Graves, Robert, 68

Gray, Thomas, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” 100

Great Dismal Swamp, Frost’s trip to, 25–26, 29

Greenfield, Kent, The Myth of Choice, 113–14, 115

Hall, Lars, 123–24

Hardy, Thomas, 86

Hass, Robert Bernard, 33

Haynes, John-Dylan, 127

H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), 154

Hecate (goddess), 168

hekataia (emblems), 168

Hirstein, William, 119

Hitchcock, Alfred, Psycho, 7

Hoffman, Tyler, 42–43

Hollis, Matthew, Now All Roads Lead to France, 15

Holton, Richard, 110

Horney, Karen, 51

Hornsby, Bruce, 3

Howells, William Dean, 41

Hulme, T. E., 154

human voice, contours of, 31

Hume, David, 147–48

“Liberation from the Self,” 148–49

“Hyla Brook,” 27

identity:

different aspects of, 149, 152

uncertainty about, 143–44

individualism, 12, 79–80, 104, 107, 112, 153, 154, 155, 159, 160–61, 163–64

internal consistency, 112

“Into My Own,” 131

irrationality, 115

Iyengar, Sheena, The Art of Choosing, 111–13, 155

James, William, 26, 165

“jam study,” 112

Jaws, 106

Jefferson, Thomas, 161

Jesus of Nazareth, 96

Johansson, Petter, 123–24

Johnson, Lyndon B., 48

Johnson, Robert, “Cross Road Blues,” 164

Johnson, Samuel, 100

Johnson, S. I., 168

joke vs. poem, 98, 154

Joyce, James, Ulysses, 8, 20

Kant, Immanuel, 146

Kearns, Katherine, 85

Kennedy, John F., 47–49

Khrushchev, Nikita, 48

Kitayama, Shinobu, 156

Korsakoff’s syndrome, 119–20

Kusserow, Adrie, 159

Kweli, Talib, 3

language:

indeterminacy of, 30–31

ordinary speech, 30, 34, 36, 38–39, 43, 46, 58

of poetry, 30–31, 46

syntax of, 31

universality in, 31

Larkin, Philip, 60–61, 86

Lask, Thomas, 42–43

Lazarus, Emma, “The New Colossus,” 171

LeDoux, Joseph, 120–21

Lee, Robert E., 22

Lehman, David, 95

Lentricchia, Frank, 9

Leonhard, Emma Mae, 42

Leucippus, 125

Lewis, Wyndham, 20

libertarians, 128

liberty, 13, 16, 104

Libet, Benjamin, 126

liminality, 167–72

literature, standard themes of, 100

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 9, 165

Lowell, Amy, 41

Lowell, Robert, 10

Lowenherz, David H., 116

magic, 169

Mark, Saint, 96

Markus, Hazel Rose, 156

“Mending Wall,” 10

metaphor, 168

Mill, John Stuart, 32

Miller, Arthur, Death of a Salesman, 7

modernism, 35–36

Monteiro, George, 72–73

Montgomery, Lucy Maud, Anne of Green Gables, 144

Morrison, Kay, 50

Moss, Howard, 52–53

“Most of It, The,” 94

“Mountain, The,” 31

“Mowing,” 27

Muldoon, Paul, 101

“My Butterfly,” 24–25

neighbors, 58–59

Newdick, Robert, 139

New Republic, The, 41

New York Times, 48

North of Boston, 30, 32, 41, 44

Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, The, 86–87

Oates, Joyce Carol, 55

optimism, 105

“Oven Bird, The,” 27

Parfit, Derek, 110, 148

Parini, Jay, Robert Frost: A Life, 23, 25, 54

“Pasture, The,” 32–34

Payne, Leonidas W. Jr., 65

Peck, M. Scott, The Road Less Traveled, 4, 79, 134–36

perfectability, human, 104–5

perfection, quest for, 19

personhood, 140–45

Picasso, Pablo, 10

Pinsky, Robert, 5, 94, 95

Plath, Sylvia, 86

Plato, 146

Poe, Edgar Allan, 10

poetry:

about delay, 90–91

concepts embodied in, 100

difficult nature of, 35, 65, 97

envelope stanza in, 33

form of, 62

free verse, 89

guardedness vs. fervor in, 86

interpretation of, 11, 97

language of, 30–31, 46

and metaphor, 168

and music, 89

sound of sense vs. words in, 30

universality in, 31, 35

Poetry Society of America, 47

poets:

and popularity, 10–11

reputations built by, 19

strong periods of, 27

as unknowns, 19–21

Poirier, Richard, 12

Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing, 117–18

Pope, Alexander, 87

Popkin, Henry, 42

Pound, Ezra, 9, 10, 20, 35, 154

Cantos, 86

“Station of the Metro,” 6

Pritchard, William, 41

Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered, 54, 55

Pulitzer Prize, 45

“Putting in the Seed,” 27

rationalization, 12

recognition, 100

“Reluctance,” 88

Richardson, Mark, 69–70, 95–96

Road Not Taken (video game), 4

“Road Not Taken, The,” 2–3

ambiguity in, 144, 152

appearance of conversation in, 32, 38, 58

audience separated into factions via, 97

conclusion of, 68–69

deceptiveness of, 48, 67, 69, 70, 140

determinism vs. free will in, 128–29

“difference” analyzed as word, 144–45

and “Directive,” 94–96, 98

as emblematic, 11, 16–17

familiar concepts in, 100–101

final stanza of, 82–85, 117, 142–45

first lines of, 98

hesitations in, 89

influence of, 1–4

inspired by crossroad meeting, 142

inspired by Thomas, 13–16, 29, 65, 85–86, 152–53

joke vs., 98, 154

message attributed to, 136

as misunderstood, 7–9, 11–12, 15–16, 65–68, 82