The Iowa Review
Volume 10
Issue 1 Winter
1979
The Other Side of the Wall
Douglas L. Wilson
Follow this and additional works at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview
Part of the Creative Writing Commons
Recommended Citation
Wilson, Douglas L.. "The Other Side of the Wall." The Iowa Review 10.1 (1979): 65-75. Web.
Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview/vol10/iss1/21
This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by Iowa Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Iowa Review by an
authorized administrator of Iowa Research Online. For more information, please contact [email protected].
Article 21
The Other
Side of theWall
Douglas L. Wilson
i
POINT
STARTING
is something
that must seem fairly obvious:
the
Iwould not expect to
that we are creatures of our own experience.
get much of an argument on that score, and yet if one begins to develop this
idea in certain ways, one can readily create a dialectic that has the appearance,
at least, of a dilemma.
One could, for example,
in
the ways
emphasize
our
we
are
to
limited or,
which
the victims of
the
experience,
heighten
by its iron precincts. Or one could, I think, with
metaphor,
imprisoned
MY
notion
the liberating character of experience
and stress
emphasize
equal validity
frees us from the limitations
of our former
how every new experience
It is simply amatter of how we wish to construe the notion that
condition.
we are creatures of our own experience. What both versions of the idea have
in common, however,
is the concept of a barrier, a line of demarcation.
And
for the poem that is the focus of my essay?
this has special significance
Robert Frost's "Mending Wall."
is extremely
familiar,
certainly one of Frost's best
"Mending Wall"
known poems and perhaps one of the most famous in all of American
poet
school to the
ry. It is almost invariably read by students from elementary
it
it
until
made
very recently,
every anthology;
readily lends
college level;
a wall" and
is
there
that
doesn't
love
itself to quotation.
Say "Something
it is a remark
educated people are certain to catch the reference. Moreover,
poem. That is to say,
ably straightforward
seems
to mean pretty much
it
reservations,
A survey of the long
classic ambiguities.
in 1914, reveals
poem, which was published
given the standard new critical
it says and to present no
what
on the
record of commentary
little
critical
relatively
disagree
ment.
a very familiar story, "Mending Wall"
is about two
meet
to
stone
who
in
the
the
wall that
repair
England neighbors
spring
one
in
Since
live
their
the
country,
separates
properties.
they clearly
might
assume that they are farmers, though all we are told is that one "is all pine"
and the other is "apple orchard" and that neither has cows (and, by exten
To
rehearse briefly
New
that might wander
sion, other livestock)
through the broken wall. As they
to
the
the
mend
in a debate over
wall,
engage his neighbor
speaker attempts
the necessity of having a wall between
them. His position
is summed up in
there is that doesn't love awall." His neighbor
the classic line, "Something
refuses to be drawn into an argument
and simply replies (another classic
The speaker regards this as a
line), "Good fences make good neighbors."
as applying a rule that
kind of category mistake,
for he sees his neighbor
was intended to cover a different kind of situation. The poem concludes
65
University of Iowa
is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to
The Iowa Review
®
www.jstor.org
of the neighbor
the speaker's depiction
or change.
of
thinking
independent
incapable
with
as an unreflective
primitive,
I see him there,
a
stone
grasped firmly by the top
Bringing
In each hand, like an old-stone
savage armed,
in darkness as it seems to me,
He moves
of woods
only and the shade of trees.
not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Not
He will
can be, and has been,
that the poem
in spite of all the ways
to
not
it
is
difficult
approached and dealt with,
adopt the point of view of the
commentators
the
do.
Given
the commitment
of
speaker, and virtually all
to
the examined
life and the predominantly
educators and educated people
Now
Is there any
times, this is perhaps inevitable.
spirit of modern
progressive
the poem, one might ask, in which
the neighbor does
way of understanding
not emerge as the heavy? Before
1968-69 Iwould have said "no," but since
that time I have found myself on the other side of the wall.
II
I spent a sabbatical year on a small farm that my wife and I had
the
just acquired and that had over a mile and a half of line fence. Almost
I met him was
asked me by one of my neighbors
when
first question
I intended to pasture cows. This question was prompted
whether
by the
wretched
condition of the fences I had inherited from the former owner.
I said that I didn't. During
the
My new neighbor was visibly relieved when
course ofthat year Iwas to see and hear a good deal about the importance of
In 1968-69
fences
in a rural
community.
things I heard about was the case of a former neighbor
It was not simply
had been regarded as a notoriously
bad neighbor.
and in a constant state of disrepair. This is a
that his fences were neglected
very serious matter in dairy country, where half of a farmer's line fence (or
and the other half is the responsibility
fence) is his responsibility
boundary
of his neighbor. But it was clearly more than that. Itwas more that he was
One
of the first
who
and generally
indifferent or insensitive
quarrelsome,
on
a
in
sins
that operated
community
neighbors?cardinal
In truth, it was his attitude
mutual
assistance and support.
distrustful,
towards his
the basis
of
towards his
his
that
for
and
accounted
his notori
responsibilities
neighbors
neighborly
were
not
so
came
to
I
much
the
his
and
see,
fences,
ety,
actually regarded
source as the symbol of the problem.
A long-standing
of the
member
66
and one I am sure who had
neighborhood,
the situation
read his poems,
summarized
fences
make
good
good neighbors."
As time went by, Ihad occasion to see the
across the road could not keep
My neighbor
never
for me
heard of Robert Frost or
as follows:
"They say
problem a little closer to home.
his livestock properly penned,
to find that a huge sow had uprooted half our
as the summer went along, and we
deteriorated
one morning
front lawn. The situation
of pigs. I could take
found ourselves on the receiving end of a pilgrimage
matters
in hand and build a fence around my front yard (which I eventually
I decided in due course that
did), but this would not keep the pigs at home.
the fault was not in my neighbor's
fences but in my neighbor?more
and I awoke
in his attitude toward his neighborly
precisely
responsibilities.
As one of my principal preoccupations
that year was considering what it
meant
to live in the country and how that differed from urban life, I began
to think a good deal about fences. And whenever
I did, my
thoughts
studied it in school,
invariably returned to Frost's "Mending Wall." Having
it
and
and
every year in my Ameri
college,
graduate school,
having taught
can literature classes,
I assumed
Wall"
that I knew
pretty
"Mending
and understood
thoroughly
"Good
well.
perfectly
fences make
good
neighbors."
"Why do they make
good
neighbors?
Where
there
Before
What
And
are
cows?
But
here
there
Isn't it
are
no
cows.
I built a wall
Iwas walling
I'd ask to know
in and walling
out,
Iwas like to give offense."
to whom
position of the speaker was convincing
enough, as it had been in the
on
the farm had given it ample warrant. But the
past, and my experience
notion
that the speaker was leaving something
important out of the equa
The
tion?that
go
away
fences
and,
were
in fact,
more
than
continued
merely
to grow
to
barriers
in my
livestock?would
not
mind.
tomeet one of my neighbors?a
In the fall of the year I happened
reticent,
some make shift repairs
older man?at
the fenceline, where he was making
to a stretch of very poor fence that I realized, alas, was my responsibility
to
keep up. Iwas, of course, properly embarrassed but also surprised because I
had understood
that he never kept cattle in that field. He quickly explained
to pasture his cows there for a few weeks
that he only wanted
and that he
didn't expect me to rebuild the fence just for that. We fell to talking about
the condition of our fences,
made first. Having
satisfied
ed that he did not feel right
While
the fence in question
shrubs to grow up on his
what repairs were needed and which
should be
himself as to my good intentions, he volunteer
about his neglect of the fencerow
in front of us.
was mine
to keep up, he had allowed trees and
on mine,
side, as they had done prodigiously
67
for a dense and entangled mass of
making
dilapidated fence. I thought I saw what he was
to keep up
it more difficult
certainly made
What bothered him, he finally allowed, was
soon agreed, with awarmth
and enthusiasm
foliage on either side of the
driving at, and I said that this
it.
the fence. But that wasn't
that "it didn't look good." We
that astonished me, to meet in
the spring and clear the fencerow
together.
It became abundantly
that
clear to me, in thinking about this encounter,
than the condition of the
what we had been talking about was much more
as
fence that divided our farms. It had rather to do with our relationship
in fact, had virtually
The practical aspect of the fence,
been
neighbors.
for he had told me that he was about to give
eliminated from consideration,
so as to qualify for social security.
up his cows and his milking
operation
or
to do with wandering
we
to
do had little
What
had agreed
nothing
never
across
and eat his alfalfa. We were
livestock. My cornstalks would
get
our
we
to be good neighbors.
to
in
wanted
fences
order because
put
going
I began
back to "Mending Wall" after this series of experiences,
Coming
see
to
it in a different light. There was a pattern in these experiences?the
notorious
the neighbor with the unpenable pigs, and the
former neighbor,
to
I began to discern what it
who
the fencerow?and
wanted
clear
neighbor
was. Good fences do make good neighbors. Not just where
there are cows
if he really
there are neighbors. The speaker in "Mending Wall,"
believes that the force of nature that sunders stone walls should be regarded
as a cue to right conduct,
is short on experience
and long on mischief.
The
reason
on
true
Our
for
is
wisdom.
the
other
view,
hand,
only
neighbor's
in
this
he
"moves
darkness"
is
that
is
that
the
the
way
speaker
supposing
I began to ask myself,
if this were the case, had this
represents him. How,
And how had
and misunderstood?
poem come to be so widely misread
Frost, who must have known all of this perfectly well from the beginning,
come to cast the poem in the form he did? The balance of my essay deals
with these two questions.
but where
Ill
in the context
The first question can be answered fairly easily, I believe,
I began. We are creatures of our
with which
of the unstartling proposition
own experience. To understand
that the neighbor who
says "Good fences
is uttering something
make good neighbors"
an appeal to experience. As a debate there
on his
seems to have all the arguments
it
done
is
only in
meaningless,
mending
of
this
all
of
and
the
neighbor;
thinking
like practical wisdom
requires
is little to choose. The speaker
is useless,
side. The wall
and
the interest of the outmoded
of
is confirmed
by a principle
love awall." To judge this encoun
nature: "Something
there is that doesn't
ter strictly as a debate, as most readers apparently do, is inevitably to run a
on points. Besides,
tally in favor of the speaker and award him the decision
68
that have general appeal to readers of modern American
he has qualities
he
take things like traditional
is
critical; he doesn't
sayings for
poetry:
a
sense
to
Our
of
humor.
he
has
and
is
he
open
impression
change;
granted;
is just the opposite,
of the neighbor,
poor man,
though it rests almost
entirely on the speaker's biased references.
or
To judge the issue between
them intelligently
requires knowledge
"the
need
Frost
elsewhere
calls
the
that lies outside
poem?what
experience
of being versed in country things." The speaker in the poem tries to deal
the issue offences
appeals to the nature
with
by
by arguments,
speculation,
philosophically?by
the reader must grasp is that the
of things. What
what is truly at
speaker cannot or, for some reason, will not acknowledge
He insists that, since he has only apple
stake in the ritual offence mending.
is not "needed."
This
the wall
trees and the neighbor
has only pines,
serves only a very limited function,
such as
assumes
that a boundary
livestock out or in. But country people know, not by an appeal to
keeping
is something
but as part of their culture, that a boundary
very
philosophy
a
an
token
of
of
and
it
is
both
responsibility
acknowledgement
important;
a
a
a
is
guarantee
respect. Maintaining
boundary
hedge against uncertainty,
can be seen in these terms as nothing
less
against dispute. The boundary
than an aspect of one's identity.
land
Now
these are things that are understood
implicitly by people whose
of their lives. One could never persuade a farmer that the
is an extension
Frost was
speaker in this poem has the better of this argument. Certainly
to boundaries
aware of this, for his poetry
and
is replete with
references
if Frost's posi
their critical importance. As Radcliffe Squires has observed,
is represented by the speaker in "Mending
tion with respect to boundaries
on the subject. But
else he has written
it is at odds with everything
Wall,"
Frost's
and
readers,
certainly
his
commentators,
we
have
not
been
farmers.
the contrary,
have been city dwellers who have approached
in combination
urban perspective.
from an unmistakably
This,
as
a
to a decidedly
to
has
led
debate,
judge the poem
disposition
of
the poem.
understanding
On
his poem
with our
imperfect
IV
to
is a great deal that might be said at this point, but I propose
to
in
order
of
the poem's
further discussion
say
postpone
interpretation
I raised, namely, how did Frost come
about the second question
something
to cast the dramatic encounter of "Mending Wall"
in the form that he did
to a widespread
of his own
and so seem to contribute
misunderstanding
to risk the indulgence
of the
I am going
poem. To pursue this question,
There
I began.
in which
reader and ease back into the biographical mode
As is well known, Frost's career as a poet did not really begin in earnest
his family to England.
until he was nearly 40 years old and he had moved
69
there was not simply his good
he came to find himself as a poet while
a publisher
for a volume
in finding
of his early poems or his
other
with
Thomas
Edward
and
British poets or his recogni
acquaintance
were
tion by Ezra Pound,
these
all
important results of his two-year
though
in
What
Lawrance
and his edition of
stay
England.
Thompson's
biography
as a poet can be
the letters make
clear is that Frost's sudden emergence
in England
in North of
traced to a series of poems, written
and published
were
that
the
of
his
for
the
homesickness
life and
Boston,
outcropping
of
New
rural
landscape
England.
In 1975,1 had the good fortune to spend a summer in England,
and while
there I set for myself
the task of investigating
the circumstances
in which
I
Frost's emergence as a poet took place. Not long after arriving in England,
a picturesque
went with my family on a tour of the Cotswolds,
range of
How
fortune
hills west of Oxford.
There my attention was caught at once
stone walls that lined the fields and roadsides. Here were
walls made of neatly stacked slabs of limestone, which
nowhere betrayed signs of an annual upheaval, even though they frequently
had been built on the steepest of inclines. If something
there is that doesn't
it seemed to be inoperative
in the Cotswolds.
love a wall,
A little investigation
into these walls served only to heighten my interest.
are
stone
called
walls,
dry
They
"dry" because
they are made without
need of
cement, and they do stand for scores of years, ifwell made, without
are
in
found
certain
of
and
Scotland
parts
repair. They
only
England
(where
they are called dry stane dykes) for the obvious reason that they are only put
limestone is readily available and close to the site of the wall.
up where
Had Frost seen these dry stone walls before he wrote "Mending Wall,"
I
would
wondered.
have
he
if
his
had
been
around
eye
Certainly
they
caught
and very attractive features of the
them, for they are both very prominent
soon ripened
rural landscape where
they appear. What began as curiosity
into speculation.
If Frost had seen the dry stone walls, he would have made
it a point to learn something
about them and would
have discovered
their
broad-backed
by the distinctive
miles of well-kept
remarkable
properties.
If he
came
to
see
that
stone
walls,
under
certain
can stand for generations
without
have un
repair, it would
a
seems
affected
the
he
conceived
and
constructed
that
way
poem
doubtedly
to urge upon its readers the futility of wall-building.
He would have been
made keenly aware of how limited and parochial the position
taken by the
conditions,
speaker in "Mending Wall" can be seen to be.
an hypothesis
So compelling was this possibility
that I conceived
about
the writing
of "Mending Wall":
in England had
that Frost's experiences
brought about a dramatic change in his attitude toward rural New England
and the life that he had lived there; for the people and the places that he had
left behind thinking he hated, he discovered
that he now felt something
like
so
he
for
the
he
homesick
life
that
had
this
and
affection;
grew
gladly left,
70
issued in a series of new poems that were far better than anything
experience
he had written previously.
So much of my theory was simply drawn from
letters and Thomp
the biographical
record as it emerges from the published
now
I
could
have come to
son's biography.
conjectured,
"Mending Wall,"
Frost as a reconsideration
of his relationship with his former New Hamp
his neighbor
shire neighbor, Napolean
Guay. Nostalgically
remembering
and their spring outings at the wall in conjunction with
seeing dry stone
a
in
in having made
which
his
walls could have triggered
poem
perversity
appear the better reasoning was implicitly acknowledged.
If this theory were to
A number of problems now presented
themselves.
to show that Frost was at least exposed
hold its own, itwould be necessary
to dry stone walls before "Mending Walls" was written.
If he had brought
for example,
the theory
the poem over to England with him from America,
was kaput. But that did not seem to be the case, though itwas true of a few
the worse
the poems for this
of Boston poems. Frost seems to have begun writing
for
earlier
these
few
the
fall
of 1912, and the
late
poems?in
volume?except
was
sent
to
the
about a year
completed manuscript
apparently
publisher
to get Frost and dry stone walls
later. It seemed a reasonable time in which
together and to get the poem written. All that was required, I reasoned, was
the necessary persistence on my part.
North
I had the benefit of ideal working
conditions for this task, for the summer
season of glorious sunshine in England,
of 1975 was an unprecedented
and I
was
in
the rarified scholarly atmosphere
of the English Reading
working
of the Bodleian
Room
The sunshine was important,
Library at Oxford.
not just for its effect on the spirit, but because the light in the
incidentally,
Bodleian,
standards,
windo
like
and
its cataloging
I could not
system,
always
is scandalous
arrive in time
by American
library
to get a seat by the
ws.
The early going was not encouraging.
Frost had spent his first year and a
half in England?the
time during which
the North of Boston poems were
written?in
in Buckinghamshire.
Chalk country. Lovely but
Beaconsfield
no limestone,
and thus no dry stone walls. No mention
of "Mending Wall"
could be found in the published
letters during this period, and Frost was
close to Beaconsfield,
with occasional
staying maddeningly
trips to London,
which was only 30 miles away. By August,
so
he had
the
nearly completed
new book that he was
various
titles for it and had awarded
considering
himself and his family a vacation. But now things began to look up, for he
announced
in letters to his friends that he was going to spend his vacation in
Scotland. Having just read amarvellous
book on dry stone walls written by
a Scotsman,
I knew that he was headed in a promising
direction. His report
on his trip to Scotland,
in a letter to Sidney Cox dated circa Sept. 15, proved
to be all that I could have
hoped for. It read in part:
We
are just back from
a two week's
journey
in Scotland
. . .The
71
adventure
best
summer
boarders
was
the time
never
come.
in Kingsbarns
The
common
where
people
tourists
in
the
and
south
I don't like to have around me. They don't know how
of England
to meet you man to man. The people in the north are more
like
Iwonder whether
Americans.
they made Burns' poems or Burns'
poems made them. And there are stone walls
(dry stone dykes) in
the north:
I liked those.
this passage in Frost's letter to Cox on
say that Iwas elated at finding
in the Bodleian
it.
is to seriously understate
that bright summer morning
I
"Could Frost,"
troubled by a minor matter.
And yet I was curiously
was
wrote
stane
in my notebook,
"have written
This
admit
'dry
dykes'?"
tedly trivial, but I felt certain that if Frost had taken note of the Scottish form
as he had, he would
And
likely have used "stane" as well.
"dykes,"
To
certainty
Library
exacts
in the Baker
its price. I duly noted
that the letter was
to check it for myself when
I got the
and resolved
at Dartmouth
chance.
indeed seen the dry stone walls
and he had taken particular note of them. But had he
of Great Britain,
already written
"Mending Wall" when he saw them? Just before going to
a letter to his friend John T. Bartlett
in which he
Scotland he had written
listed the titles of 12 poems to be included in the new book, which would
appear with a total of 17 poems. "Mending Wall" was not on the
eventually
left out, or was it
list. Had it been omitted for some reason, inadvertently
more
I decided
that there was no
likely that it had not yet been written?
Iwas
thus able to establish
that Frost had
in doubting.
percentage
sources was a
The only other clue that I could find in the published
seemingly unrelated reference? buried deep in the footnotes of Thompson's
to a friendship that Frost had formed with a Scots Shakespearian
biography,
mentions
this friend
Smith. Thompson
scholar named James Cruickshanks
in
from
in
with
Frost's
connection
1915, for
departure
England
ship only
to make the crossing
loaned him money
Smith was one of the people who
to Thompson,
to America.
had met Smith at Kingsbarns
Frost, according
a
note
to check out the
so
I
in
made
notebook
his
1913
vacation,
my
during
I
Frost
could
find
and
Smith.
between
nothing further to shed
relationship
on
I followed Frost back to
in
in
due
course,
and,
my
theory
England,
light
America.
V
year, in 1976, Iwent with my family on a bicentennial
following
to
eastern United
of others, we
the
States, where, with millions
pilgrimage
New
sites: Bunker
of
the
essential
the
rounds
made
England
patriotically
at
Baker
in Boston,
Concord
the
Hill
and
Concord,
Library at
Bridge
The
72
Iwas excited about working
Imay as well confess that, while
in the superb collection of original Frost materials
that repose in the Baker
was
most
I
of
the examination
that
the
prospect
keenly anticipated
Library,
Frost's letter to Cox in which he had written of the dry stone dykes, a topic
in editing
that had become dear to my heart. Iwas certain that Thompson,
Dartmouth.
the letters, had mis-transcribed
Frost's handwriting
and that the word
was
I
"stone" would
be
fortified by a
"stane"?and
Thus
actually
right.
room
I settled down in that marvellous
clearcut victory,
(the light
reading
was much better than the Bodleian's)
to see what
I could learn from the
remaining
material.
in the Baker
There are a great many different collections
soon
I
all of the interesting
and
discovered
that virtually
relating to Frost,
letters by Frost
that proved to be
The collection
himself had been published by Thompson.
most productive
for my purposes
turned out to be the file of letters that
In trying to gauge Frost's homesick
Frost received while living in England.
ness while
in England,
I had
because of its crucial effect on his poetry,
to him. A
that the mail that he received was of great importance
observed
in Frost's correspondence
passage
captures his feelings very memorably.
"Homesickness
makes us news-hungry.
Every time the postman bangs the
our mouths
our eyes shut like birds' in a
letter-slot-door
and
go open
nest.
..."
I
in
the
Baker
spent several fascinating hours
Library,
Sitting
come
the
mail
that
had
reading through
through that letter-slot-door.
in the otherwise
Thus engaged
practice of reading someone
despicable
I struck gold. For here were the letters written
to Frost by the
else's mail,
man he had met on his Scottish vacation at Kingsbarns,
James Cruickshanks
Smith. This first letter acknowledges
receipt of Frost's first book, A Boy's
Will, and its Sept. 15 date indicates that Frost must have sent the book to
him immediately
after arriving home from his vacation in Kingsbarns.
The
to
second letter is dated Nov.
time
which
is
close
the
that the
24, 1913,
very
of North of Boston was to go to the printer. Smith begins by
final manuscript
the work that he has been doing and then the things that he does
describing
for
"I
recreation.
do
some
pure
geometry,"
he
writes,
"and
learn
some
is very like poetry for releasing the mind. And
Shelley by heart: Geometry
one
of
of which
natural
the masters of style have the
the
transitions
that, by
me
to
I herewith
round
return.
latest
secret, brings
your
poems?which
Now
about
those
poems:?
"Imprimis. Of course I recognized
'Mending Wall' at once
which had been suggested by our walk at Kingsbarns.
..."
It was not the 4th of July in Hanover,
New Hampshire,
moment
to me.
it felt like fireworks
as the poem
but
at that
VI
I realize,
of course,
that it would
be premature
at this juncture
to pro
73
nounce: Q.E.D. What I have been able to show is that Frost wrote "Mend
in the fall of 1913 and that it was prompted
that
by something
ing Wall"
on
a
at
C.
walk
with
Smith
Scotland,
Fifeshire,
J.
Kingsbarns,
happened
where he had been particularly
attracted by dry stone walls. But adding this
to what we know about Frost's situation and attitudes at this time, I feel
in filling in the picture as follows: Frost takes a walk in the
little hesitation
countryside with J. C. Smith, who explains dry stone walls to him?how
little maintenance
they are, and how
they are built, how durable
they
a
on his farm in Derry,
Frost
with
of
wall
the
require.
responds
description
which he shared with his neighbor, Napolean
N.H.,
Guay. He describes
to
how he used
the wall, partly
argue with Guay each spring about mending
out of mischief,
partly from an inability to see the point of it all. Possibly he
the contrast between
the ingenious
of the young
arguments
emphasized
laconic reply of the neighbor. With
schoolteacher
and the stubbornly
this
re
in
dramatic encounter
summoned
his
Frost
consciousness,
up
freshly
on the poem. His frame of mind
turned to Beaconsfield
and began working
is suggested by a remark he made years later: "I wrote
the poem 'Mending
I
Wall'
of
old
in
the
wall
that
hadn't
mended
several years and
thinking
Iwrote
which must be in a terrible condition.
I
that poem in England when
was very homesick
for my old wall in New England."
I began this essay with the proposition
that we are creatures of our own
It is certainly true
terms.
But I want
personal
true
for
Frost and
profoundly
on "Mending
truer perspective
for me, as I have tried to show in shamelessly
to conclude by suggesting
that it was also
can
in
this
mind
that bearing
help us to gain a
Wall." The poet who had found his subject
to find success, who was living in England and growing
and was beginning
saw and under
for a region he thought he despised,
homesick
increasingly
stood the world differently
from the bitterly discontented
schoolteacher
he
think
had been a few years before. So much did the young schoolteacher
that he had begun to believe that the
himself a victim of his circumstances
who
him
had
willed
the
hated Derry
farm had deliberately
grandfather
in
intended the legacy as a curse. In England, he began to see his experiences
a very different and what we may legitimately
call a liberating perspective,
experience.
as is perfectly
for the old wall. The
illustrated in his confessed homesickness
extent of this change is measured
in "Mending Wall"
in the
rather precisely
the point of view of the poet, who understands
difference
between
the
in
and
that
the
of
of the neighbor's
the
who
wisdom
view,
poem,
speaker
are
does not. But this can only be grasped by readers who
presumably
to
to
in
know
how
the
substance of
country things
sufficiently versed
judge
them. To be persuaded
the issue between
to
misled.
be
clearly
by the arguments
of the speaker
it may well be that this sympathetic
response to the speaker,
Ironically,
an
a
I
of
which
is function
urban perspective
and essentially mis
believe
is reported
Frost, who
placed, largely accounts for the poem's popularity.
74
is
to have said that "the poet is entitled to everything
that the reader can find
in the poem," may have been aware that this was the case, for he deliberately
to explain the poem or take sides in
a number of opportunities
sidestepped
the debate. Indeed, he once claimed that he had played "exactly fair" in the
he had twice said "Good fences make good neighbors"
and
a
a
there
love
But
is
doesn't
wall."
this
that
is
"Something
perfect
tried
example of the puckish answer that Frost liked to give when someone
a
to pin him down.
of
45
the
is
lines,
(In poem
speaker's position
expounded
are virtually
in all but two; and those, setting forth the neighbor's
position,
the same.) Whatever
the poem has may be said to be
equilibrium
disputative
a
of all the advantages
of the speaker?the
achieved by
central
balancing
poem
twice
because
the wit,
point of view,
of the neighbor?against
the humor,
the arguments,
the invidious depiction
a simple statement whose
full authority
is undi
or
can
more
minished
the
do.
all
A
that
authorial
say
by
speaker
fitting
on the poem, to my mind,
is a celebrated remark of the mature
commentary
Frost, which
appears in the preface to his Complete Poems. He is describing
"It begins," he says, "in delight
what he calls "the figure a poem makes."
and ends in wisdom."
there is that doesn't love awall."
"Something
"Good fences make good neighbors."
75