ModPo Live Webcast - 10-11-2012 - Frost's Mending Wall 

Bravo. Ten years later... plus a week.

What a terrific find tonight!

This is fascinating. Thanks for this illuminating talk of it it what it.

Wonderful! Enjoyed all this nitty-grittiness and fun approach. MORE!!!!

wonderful! thank you all.

Mending Wall Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963 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 outdoor 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 offense. 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.'

Also, this poem was written at the onset of world War 1 and after a spate of nation border building - walls -

Thank you, C Voisine, for posting the poem so that we may read along as we listen to the discussion! Billy Rowe might like to go fly a kite.

Reminds me of the early days of communism where students gathered in a village hall and hear the latest party dictums. They changed every 4 years. I am glad some of the poets at the table were truly objective.

Love Rachel!

So, what form is this written in? Is it free verse or blank verse?

Lol Love Al's closing remarks and thanks

Good gravy - this recording is more about the pontification of the particpants than the poem. Not a very good recording as to quality. Not a very good recording as to content.

Do people really need to eat at a lecture?! How horrible