strates Frost’s simultaneous command of lyrical verse, dramatic conversation and ironic commentary.(imagery, style, structure) The poetry of Forst stimulates brief, pungent reactions in the reader. These reactions create interest for they whet not only the reader’s interest in Frost as a poet, but also in his poetry. (Go with “Self” here – the imagery he’s created for the characters – their personalities, etc. (use sheet as guideline) (Self/personae) Frost poses as the literate, philosophical farmer – a man of the earth, a hard boiled, yet reflective Yankee.(SELF) Frost is the teller of the poem giving himself the ‘self’ of the (insert farmer here). He is the one that initiates the spring mending (insert line) and he also says that he has come alone and made repairs (insert hunting)…..expand on ‘to have the rabbit out of hiding to please the yelping dogs’. Yet, we also get the impression that he wants the wall down when he scoffs at his neighbors saying “good fences make good neighbors” (and also (I’d rather he said it himself). Throughout these lines Frost allies himself with both the wall builder and the wall destroyer, thus playing both sides of the fence. (images) two old farmers – one who sees the fence only for what it is (stones, work, a separating of physical boundaries); one who see the fence for what they represent – the space, the distance, the walling in and walling out, the darkness inside each of us – and who struggles with wanting the walls to stay down, while at the same time working to keep them up.Style: Mending Wall is written in blank verse with a varying meter. Note how regular and tight the lines (insert 12-15 here) when the meaning is about tightness. Note the pun in line 34, “And to whom I was like to give offence.” A-fence. Throughout the poem the form remains one long serie...
