ENGB04H3 Study Guide - Final Guide: Robert Frost, Blank Verse, Free Verse
List of Poems on Final: Part 2
Robert Frost, Medig Wall
• 20th century poem on American Modernism, blank verse
o Blank verse is much narrower concept, is iambic pentameter that is unrhymed,
no pattern of rhyme on last syllable or in between syllables
• Meaning: poem about liberal culture – culture which values skepticism, questioning,
individual freedom, and which is skeptical towards tradition, more specifically stages a
conversation/dialogue between a voice of skepticism, openness, exploration.
o On the other hand, a figure of primordial conservatism, attached to a traditional
and conventional way of doing things and would prefer not to challenge it.
o Think poem ultimately sides with voice of questioning, exploration, resistance to
tradition; symbolically allies that voice with nature itself but part of power is that
it gives primordial conservatism its due.
• Voice of poet criticizes in some ways, also finds voice into poem, pictured as someone
with a point of view, hard to dismiss that kind of conversation. Frost wants to criticize it
but also acknowledges its strength.
• Subdivision into parts:
1. Lines 1-11, first part
2. 12-20, second part
3. 21-end
▪ 21-27
▪ 28-45
• Line 1-11: The gaps, raising of the question, how are they made (made and makes turns
out to be an important word in this poem) first line question is raised, what is there?
Referring to the gaps as work of hunters, seems to be a pause in line 11.
• Line 12-20: As second part, discover the gaps and now repairing/restoring the wall, now
describing in rich, suggestive language restoring the wall, repairing it after it has been
broken down by the swelling of the earth.
• Line 21-45: Reflections on whether it is a useful/necessary activity in restoring the wall,
established a ritual every spring they mend the wall and now he is going to step back
from the ritual and reflect.
• Line 21-27: One theory of mending the wall is that it is a game; the stones are like balls.
o Speculation, exploration, not about property, one theory is that fence marks one
property from next, ut it atuall does’t ok that a; a see it ohad s.
pies ejet theo it’s aout deaated popet. Iteloula gies fist
foreclosure but also theory, another way of interpreting why the wall is there.
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o Theory of liberal culture, theory of fences, best way of organizing society not to
make them commune but to protect individuals from each other, use politics to
set barriers, rights
o He ats to aise the uestio of idiidualis ut does’t disiss it out of
hand, western liberal world uniquely prosperous for those within it
• Liberal society – poem stages two theories of liberalism.
o Cotaied i the phase good fees ake good eighous, that is a
traditional time-honoured theory about boundaries, rights are there to protect
us from each other.
▪ Humans are essentially violent and bent on domination.
▪ Society needs to make good laws to protect each individual so they are
free to do their own thing. (Hobbes way)
• Repeats good fees ake good eighous
• Powerful imagery: way earth itself changes the all, if thigs hage oe tie a’t
stay the same way, enlists nature on his side, maybe we need to be more hospitable to
change.
• Symbolism of the wall: In some ways not fundamental question, cultural boundaries in
the deepest sense.
• He is trying to register the hold of habit, hold of convention. Poem aligns questioning
with nature, first image of spilling boulders in sun.
o He is saig it’s atual to uestio, hage, eak do alls, ee hile it is
often figured as a basis for stability and continuity
• Speech acts: this poem not only performs some speech acts but is itself about the
meaning of speech, the resistance of speech, energy is recruited into the poem itself.
• “utle etapho He ill ot go ehid his fathe's saig oets the poblem with
the spatial image that the poem is centered on, which is the wall. Liberal education
asking you to go behind the sayings of traditions or the media, explore them, think
about them, unsettle them.
• Climax of poem:
o 1. line 35-6 “oethig thee is that does't loe a all, /That ats it do.
Repeated that fist lie ad ats it do adds that ephasis that he ats
the wall down (destabilizing energy). If you read it that way then what follows is
a reflection on a broader meaning of the poem.
o . Othe a to ead poe is to sa lia is good fees ake good
eighous at ed of poe hih gies oe eight to the eighous.
o There are different ways of breaking poem down and charting it.
• Rhythm: fist lies otie iai petaete, fozen-ground-sell athes ee ot
only because significant meaning but rhythm is a little bit off there.
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• When he goes ahead and builds wall, rhythm becomes emphatically iambic, established
pattern takes over poem. He succumbs to it with a bit of unwillingness.
• Public figure is treading into dangerous territory by proposing destabilizing boundaries,
by celebrating the gaps in the boundaries, making people unconformable. Culture is
conservative in sense of established boundaries. Fences are adhesive, stack up irregular
stoes, odeful to look at ut fo that easo the stoes fall off, the’e ot odeed,
Frost is using that to make the poem.
• Skeleton: How you do draw the emotional art of the poem, how do you draw the
skeleton of the poem? See poem as broken fence and then reconnected fence and then
broken fence again and repeat.
• Language and diction:
o “a this poe, otie ipotae of od spell ad spill, spell suggests
something to revise the spill. Spell suggesting religion, magic, culture,
boundaries. The spill is what destabilizes them, and poem aligns with spill,
registers the power of spells.
o Aothe keod is ake ad ade, ous / ties aisig uestio of
culture itself. Is it possible to make or remake culture, or is it already made?
Cultue alost alas elies upo the poe of the fat that it’s alead ade,
ade a log tie ago, the fat that the’e ee aoud a log tie. Fost is
raising that question.
Ezra Poud, I a “tatio of the Metro
• Pound spends months trying to write about the experience and keeps pairing it down,
and after about a year and a half, he arrives at this.
• Poem is about impression the poet had in the subway and he conveys the brevity of an
impression by the brevity of the poem, brief impression happened quickly then it was
gone.
• Pound compresses the moment, modernist emphasis on compression.
• There is a specific aim on the modernist poet
• Modernists respond to the fact of advancing urban civilization and set poems quite
frequently in urban settings.
o Also registering the fact of faster moving imagery as a fact of life
o Responding to a society that is beginning to produce images more quickly
• Juxtaposition between natural image of black bough and urban image of crowd at
subway station.
• Operates in some ways like metaphor representing one thing in terms of another.
Pound focuses more on equal signs rather than like or as.
• Appaitio patl i astatio, ot a speifi appeaae that he desies, it’s a
generalizing term, brings together generalizing terms with specific imagery.
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