Poetry Corner

[Taxman]

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

- Robert Frost

We might do well to take his words to heart.

[Taxman]

Or are the poker players of this forum less cultured than I thought? And after all of those impressive books everyone seemed to be reading...

[John Cole]

Taxman,

I love teaching this poem because most students think they know what it's about, taking the line "Good fences make good neighbors" at face value. Some have argued that the wall is even a metaphor or symbol for isolationism. For those that adhere too rigidly to one interpretation, I ask them to look at the moment in the poem where the speaker says, "Elves" and follows with "I'd rather he said it for himself." One way to read the poem--and there are many--is to see that the neighbor can only speak in cliche, passing down a sort of received "wisdom" inherited from his father. He can't "go behind the saying." Or he can't understand that the apple trees cannot threaten the pine cones.

Another way to read the poem is to see that the act of fence building, the sharing of work, does make for good neighbors, but the wall itself means nothing.

Any others? Here's one more: almost every poem Frost writes is about the writing of poetry.

[MMMMMM]

I read this poem once long ago, and have not returned to it 'til now, so thanks for posting it.

John Cole points out the "elves" section of the poem. That part is special, and somewhat pivotal. Frost is fond of the ineffable, and explores and uses it well.

The blank verse is rough and imperfect, like the wall itself;-)

Also, the times the verse spills into eleven syllables per line is structurally reminiscent of how stone walls are actually built: staggered stones, one on top of two, two on top of one (a line of ten and a line of eleven lie like levels of the wall, with the syllables representing the staggered stones). Also, the times the flow of the iambic meter is disrupted (and there are quite a few) allude to the several smaller stones in the wall which temporarily break the rhythm of the larger stones. Yet overall, one can see that it is a wall.