Robert Frost's New England Poetics Of Isolation And Community In Humanity's State Of Nature

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall," reads the first line of Robert Frost's classic poem, "Mending Wall." The narrative of Frost's most famous poem depicts two farmers, one "all" pine and the other apple orchard," who are engaged in the almost ritualistic action of summer fence mending amongst New England farmers. However, the apple farmer in the voice of the poet notes that his "apple trees will never get across/And eat the cones under his pines." Yet still, the farmers persist in the mending of fences and the keeping of barriers up between one another. This theme of attempted isolation and then connection on the part of Frost in his various poetic personas that is mirrored in the behavior of the natural world runs through "Mending Wall," "The Telephone," and "The Wood-pile."

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