Robert Frost is one of America’s most beloved poets, and "Mending Wall" is one of his most popular poems. This poem tells the tale of a rock wall which sits between two properties in the countryside. Something continually destroys this rock wall. A compelling aspect of "Mending Wall" is the Frostian sense of mystery and loneliness. What begins as a quest to discover the identity of the wall-destroyer, ends in a meditation on the value of tradition and boundaries.
"Mending Wall" is the first poem in
North of Boston, Frost’s second book of poetry. This book was published when Frost was in England, rubbing elbows with the likes of
W.B. Yeats,
T.S. Eliot, and
Ezra Pound. Frost was a contemporary of many modernist poetic movements, but he isn’t associated with any particular group of poets. He marched to his own drummer, and as a result, he garnered a good deal of criticism from the literary world. But, it is precisely because he was such an individual and his voice so original that Frost became so beloved.
Born in
San Francisco, Frost moved to Massachusetts at age eleven following his father’s death. He attended both
Dartmouth College and
Harvard University, but never earned a college degree. He was, however, often invited to teach at Dartmouth and Harvard later on in his life. You know you’re good when you get to teach college students without having a diploma yourself. After spending some time in England, Frost befriended a lot of poetic giants, including William Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound. Frost won four
Pulitzer Prizes in his lifetime, and he was asked to read a poem at
President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. If you are to randomly choose one of Frost’s poems and read it aloud on a busy street, we bet that a bunch of people will recognize the poem instantly as Frost’s – his sound and style is so unique.
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