Tweetspeak Poetry

Common Core Picture Poems: Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”

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Common Core Picture Poem Mending Wall by Robert Frost

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Feelings run in various directions, regarding the Common Core standards, but one thing we notice in the standards is an emphasis on some pretty impressive poetry. We would love to see teaching methods attend to the heart and soul of these poems, using what we call the How to Read a Poem approach.

Beyond that, we believe one great way to engage with a poem is with a dose of good mischief. This partly explains our Common Core Picture Poems. What explains the rest? We’re Tweetspeak Poetry. We do have a reputation to uphold.

Mending Wall

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 neighbour 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 neighbours.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbours? 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 neighbours.”

—Robert Frost

About Robert Frost

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874. Following the death of his father when Frost was 11, his family moved to Massachusetts. He began writing poetry in high school and went on to study at Dartmouth and Harvard though he did not finish college at either. His first published poem, My Butterfly, appeared in New York’s The Independent in 1894.

Frost worked as a teacher, cobbler, newspaper editor and farmer, ultimately selling his unsuccessful farm and moving to England in 1912 where he published his first collection. He returned to the U.S. in 1915 and by the 1920s had published several collections and had become one of the most popular poets in the country. Deeply rooted in place, his poems often embodied rural New England. He would ultimately win four Pulitzer prizes for his poetry. His best known poems include The Road Not Taken, Mending Wall, and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.

He went on to serve as a college professor at various institutions and later was called upon to recite a poem at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. Robert Frost died in 1963.

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___________________________

How to Read a Poem by Tania Runyan How to Read a Poem offers delightful advice on how to explore poetry for enjoyment and meaning. Uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology included.

Buy How to Read a Poem Now!

Will Willingham
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About Will Willingham

I used to be a claims adjuster, helping people and insurance companies make sense of loss. Now, I train other folks with ladders and tape measures to go and do likewise. Sometimes, when I’m not scaling small buildings or crunching numbers with my bare hands, I read Keats upside down. My first novel is Adjustments.

Comments

  1. L. L. Barkat says

    That is *some* wall. Looks like it will never come down. (His neighbor’s idea, no doubt 😉 )

    I especially like, “Before I built a wall, I’d ask to know/what I was walling in or walling out.”

    And the comment about the apple trees never eating the cones under the pines is quite amusing. If I could draw, that’s the drawing I might do. An apple tree sitting down to a pine cone dinner. 🙂

    Reply

  2. Maureen Doallas says

    Your wall – we don’t know from where it comes or where it is going – reminds me of Andy Goldsworthy’s at Storm King; it meanders and sneaks away to hide and then suddenly appears again, even crossing water: serpentine and especially beautiful in winter.

    Reply

  3. Sandra Heska King says

    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!”

    I’d be wanting to keep my eyes on that wall.

    Reply

  5. Richard Maxson says

    This registers with me:

    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

    Reply

  6. KSR says

    Something There Is…

    The darkest evening of the year
    I stop to lift a flask of cheer,
    In shush of snow , but near to home;
    My horse and I with naught to fear.

    The wall now mounded pillows of stone—
    And a sprite whispers “You’re alone,
    gap the wall just to savor
    the same words you hear him intone

    Every spring: “Good fences make good neighbors.”
    I’ll think of this night while we lift the boulders
    and wonder if he’ll guess who doesn’t love
    the wall as we stoop to our divisive labors.

    Reply

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