This week's assigned readings of poetry by William Butler Yeats and Robert Frost find me at a time in my life where I'm torn between what path to take and what version of me I'm looking to become along the way. I'm familiar with both poems yet the timing of this rereading provokes new meaning for me. The image of "two roads diverged in a wood" (Frost line 18) haunts me in a new way that makes me wonder whether I'm a "rough beast" that "slouches towards Bethlehem to be born" or reborn (Yeats lines 21-22). While I initially understood Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" to be a message about taking the unbeaten path in life, I now interpret it as a mirror of uncertainty that can't possibly predict where a person will end up. In his lines "long I stood /and looked down one as far as I could / to where it bent in the undergrowth," Frost is clearly acknowledging a limited view of the journey ahead regardless of the direction chosen (Frost lines 3-5). There is no guarantee that one road will be better than the other but the limited view of both is guaranteed from a stagnant vantage point. Thus the uncertainty is the invitation to discover what any given path will bring while reminding the reader that "way leads on to way" so the choice will inevitably make "all the difference" (Frost lines 14-20). Years ago, I decided to climb the corporate ladder in the insurance world despite my passion to become an educator and a published writer. I "looked down . . . as far as I could" (Frost line 4) and the corporate path seemed like a safe route to take towards financial independence. For years, that path afforded me a skyline view of DTLA from an apartment that felt relatively safe and tucked in between museums and tourist attractions. At the moment, I'm an unemployed full-time student counting down the last 60 days of my lease at a high rise apartment building in DTLA where a woman was murdered 13 days ago. Another woman was murdered just days prior to that in her high rise apartment building three blocks away from me. Clearly, I couldn't look far enough down the path I chose back then to know that I would later pray for a safe detour in a new direction altogether. In rereading Yeats poem "The Second Coming," I feel myself "turning and turning in the widening gyre" of a city whose "centre cannot hold" as violence and suffering continues to flood the streets (Yeats lines 1-3). I can feel Yeats's early twentieth century cynicism towards humanity in his poem and it pains me to feel that same cynicism towards the City of Angels in 2023. Beyond my personal experience as an Angeleno, there's an overall sense of societal collapse in the city as politicians continue to show their true colors over and over again. Perhaps Yeats exposes this common human flaw in the lines "the best lack all conviction, while the worst / are full of passionate intensity" (Yeats lines 7-8). Between the cynicism of Yeats and the pragmatism of Frost, I now interpret both poems as a warning about the trajectory of choices and the guarantee that the dangers of humanity are inevitable along the way in some shape or form. In terms of teaching these poems, I think a line by line analysis of rhythm, language and tone would go a long way in helping students glean their own personal interpretations. I also think it would be interesting to discuss how initial interpretations of both poems may change for some students after such a close reading.