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“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost

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“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost FROST POETRY ANALYSIS DIRECTIONS: Complete the TP-CASTT analysis chart for your group poem. You only need one paper per group, but you are all responsible for presenting your poem to the class. You each must speak and contribute to the presentation. TP-CASTT –an acronym for title, paraphrase, connotation, attitude, shift, title (again), and theme—is designed to help you remember the concepts you can consider when examining a poem. This is not a lockstep sequential approach, but rather it is a fluid process in which you will move back and forth, among the various concepts. For example, in examining connotations of a line, you may also notice a shift, which in turn may give you an insight into theme. Title (before reading) Although titles are often keys to possible meanings of a poem, students frequently do not contemplate them either before or after reading poetry. As a first step in the analysis of a new poem, look at the title and predict what the poem may be about. Paraphrase Another aspect of a poem often neglected by students is the literal meaning—the “plot.” Frequently, real understanding of a poem must evolve from comprehension of “what’s going on in the poem.” Try to restate a poem in your own words, focusing on one syntactical unit at a time—not necessarily on one line at a time. Another possibility is to write a sentence or two for each stanza of the poem. Connotation Although this term usually refers solely to the emotional overtones of word choice, here it indicates that you should examine any and all poetic devices, focusing on how such devices contribute to the meaning, the effect, or both of a poem. You may consider figurative language (especially simile, metaphor, and personification), symbolism, diction, point of view, and sound devices (alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhythm, and rhyme). As you develop the skill of looking carefully at new pieces of poetry, your teacher will become less active in the process. You will not only find the devices but also discuss how they create meaning. What is important is not that you are able to identify poetic devices so much as that you can explain how the devices enhance meaning and effect. Attitude (Tone) Having examined the poem’s devices and clues closely, you are now ready to explore the multiple attitudes that may be present in the poem. Examination of diction, images, and details suggests the speaker’s attitude toward the subject and contributes to understanding. Shift (Progression) Rarely does a poet begin and end the poetic experience in the same place. As is true of most of us, the poet’s understanding of an experience is a gradual realization, and the poem is a reflection of that epiphany. Consequently, your discovery of the movement is critical to your understanding of the poem. One way to help you arrive at an understanding of a poem is to trace the changing feelings of the speaker from the beginning to the end, paying particular attention to the conclusion. The discovery of shift can be facilitated if you watch for the following: Key words (but, yet, however, although) Punctuation (dashes, periods, colons, ellipsis) Stanza divisions Changes in line or stanza length or both Irony (sometimes irony hides shifts) Effect of structure on meaning Changes in sound that may indicate changes in meaning Changes in diction (slang to formal language) Title (after reading) Examine the title again, this time on an interpretive level. Theme In identifying theme, you will recognize the human experience, motivation, or condition suggested by the poem. One way for you to arrive at this is, first summarize the “plot” of the poem in a paragraph (in writing or orally); next, list the subject or subjects of the poem (moving from literal subjects to abstract concepts such as death, war, discovery); then, determine what the poet is saying about each subject and write a complete sentence. You have then identified theme. POEM: AUTHOR: TITLE (BEFORE READING) PARAPHRASE CONNOTATION ATTITUDE (TONE) SHIFT (PROGRESSION) TITLE (AFTER READING) THEME “Birches” by Robert Frost When I see birches bend to left and right Until he took the stiffness out of them, Across the lines of straighter darker trees, And not one but hung limp, not one was left I like to think some boy's been swinging them. For him to conquer. He learned all there was But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay To learn about not launching out too soon As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them And so not carrying the tree away Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise After a rain. They click upon themselves To the top branches, climbing carefully As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored With the same pains you use to fill a cup As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust— Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away So was I once myself a swinger of birches. You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. And so I dream of going back to be. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, It's when I'm weary of considerations, And they seem not to break; though once they are And life is too much like a pathless wood bowed Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs So low for long, they never right themselves: Broken across it, and one eye is weeping You may see their trunks arching in the woods From a twig's having lashed across it open. Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground I'd like to get away from earth awhile Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair And then come back to it and begin over. Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. May no fate willfully misunderstand me But I was going to say when Truth broke in And half grant what I wish and snatch me away With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: I should prefer to have some boy bend them I don't know where it's likely to go better. As he went out and in to fetch the cows— I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree, Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Whose only play was what he found himself, Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, Summer or winter, and could play alone. But dipped its top and set me down again. One by one he subdued his father's trees That would be good both going and coming back. By riding them down over and over again One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost 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 neighbor 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 outdoor 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 neighbors.” Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: “Why do they make good neighbors? 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 offense. 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 neighbors.” “Nothing Gold can Stay” by Robert Frost Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold.
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