Senior Poetry: Mending Wall

'Robert Frost stood at the intersection of nineteenth-century romanticism and twentieth-century modernism and made both his own. Frost adapted the genteel values and techniques of nineteenth-century poetry, but Barron argues that it was his commitment to realism that gave him popular as well as scholarly appeal and created his enduring legacy...'

'Reading to write..'

'The letters of Robert Frost invite us to reconsider the man behind the poetry...'

'In his 1954 essay "The Prerequisites," Robert Frost (1874–1963) writes that "[a] poem is best read in the light of all the other poems ever written."1 In this statement, Frost demonstrates a clear understanding of the inevitable connections that exist between great poets...'

'In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on...'

'Frost helped renew popular interest in American poetry by refusing to write in the academic modernist style that was popular at the time. Instead, he wrote about nature and rural life in a traditional yet complex style that appealed to a wide audience...'

'As the border wall with Mexico that President Trump is building gains greater and greater attention, so too has the early 20th century poem, “Mending Wall,” by American poet Robert Frost. The poem takes issue with the old proverb “good fences make good neighbors,” which happens to be precisely the same proverb that Vice President Mike Pence has used in the past to describe the border wall with Mexico...'

'Art has always been closely intertwined with politics, and throughout history many artists have protested, both through their art and their political activism, against unjust political actions. In recent history, the Vietnam War era saw the rise of political art, a prime example of which could be observed in the proliferation of protest posters in the era. The ascendance of Donald Trump to the highest political office in the United States, and the fierce opposition by many American artists to him, marked another chapter in the battle between arts and politics. Against this backdrop, this article aims to analyze the way in which one of Robert Frost's most famous poems, "Mending Wall" (1914), was appropriated by the anti-Trump media to criticize his highly contentious immigration policies...'