For May–June · 6poems & readings

Graduation Poems

Roads taken, rosebuds gathered, tassels turned: poems for commencement cards, speeches, and the last page of a yearbook.

Graduation has a standard poem and a standard misreading of it. Frost's 'The Road Not Taken' is quoted at commencement every year as a hymn to individualism — but the poem says the two roads were "really about the same", and that the speaker will *later* claim he took the less travelled one "with a sigh". It is a poem about the stories we tell about our choices, not about brave choosing. Quote it if you like; just know that a sharp graduate may know the twist.

The safer classics are Herrick's 'To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time' ("Gather ye rosebuds while ye may"), which is straightforwardly about seizing the moment, and Kipling's 'If—', which is a list of instructions and therefore does exactly what a commencement speech wants. Whitman's 'O Me! O Life!' is the one for a graduate who is anxious rather than triumphant: it admits the question is hard and answers it in a single line. For a card, four to eight lines is plenty — pick the stanza, not the whole poem.