Robert Frost and the Good Neighbor Poetry

Part 2 - the Good Neighbor Poetry

[The following is a transcript to a lecture for the Rising Tide Foundation.]

To access the lecture format, click here.

Last week, our poem, ‘Mending Wall’, ended with the last line – “He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.” And so we were back to square one. And we hadn’t answered that question, why something there is that doesn’t love a wall? But I don’t think that the dialogue ended here. We were only shown a small glimpse of part of the whole dialogue, but a glimpse that showed us the thinking that’s going on. But how would the dialogue have continued, we wonder. Well, first let’s read the whole poem again, and then ask ourselves again, do good fences make good neighbors?

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 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 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.’

Part 2 - the Good Neighbor Poetry

Well … you know the title of the poem is Mending Wall – it’s a title that at first seemed somewhat curious to me. Frost didn’t title the poem Good Fences, or Good Neighbors. No. He called it Mending Wall, and that should remind us of another old saying about ‘mending our fences’, that means to better our relationship with our neighbors, to become a better neighbor.

So now for us to answer the question whether good fences make good neighbors, or whether good neighbors make good fences, it doesn’t matter. Whether there is a wall or not, it doesn’t matter. What matters is whether we mend our fences, whether we’re being good neighbors. Maybe that old saying should be ‘mending fences make good neighbors’?

But weren’t we told that walls are built to keep out the barbarians – the criminals, the thieves and the smugglers? We might ask, why are there these ‘so-called’ barbarians – are they trying to invade the garden from the jungle? If we keep our neighbors exploited, backward, under-developed and poor, isn’t that the real cause of their invasion? And who is it that would mend that wall – would it be the exploiting neighbor, or would it be the good neighbor? If we acted as a good neighbor, the wall could be well mended, or maybe we wouldn’t even need a wall.

This historical fight over this idea of being a good neighbor is part of the fundamental fight for independence in American history, and a part of the fight to find the truth.

Let’s read an excerpt from President James Monroe’s State of the Union Address to Congress, December 1823 :

“… the occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers … that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.”

The Monroe Doctrine, as developed by John Quincy Adams, was in response to the new republics of South America declaring their independence from Spain. To deny them recognition would be to reject the republican principle that had established the United States. But America also had to follow President George Washington’s policy of neutrality, regarding the internal affairs of European countries.

The United States would continue to be “tranquil but deeply attentive spectators” of any war between these new republics of southern America and Spain – that means non-interference. But any attempts by other European powers to seize or to control these former Spanish colonies would be viewed as being ‘unfriendly’ to the United States.   This was a principle of the Non-Colonization of the Americas. It was kind of like building a non-colonization wall – between Europe and the American continents.

But the United States weren’t strong enough to enforce this principle, and they weren’t strong enough to mend this non-colonization wall, until after the Civil War. When Mexico suspended the payment of its foreign debts, a French invasion installed Maximilian Hapsburg as the new Emperor of Mexico, but the United States intervened to help force the French to leave, that allowed the Mexicans to remove the monarchy and to restore their republic.

But the Monroe Doctrine’s wall of neutrality and non-interference changed with the Anglo-American alliance of President Theodore Roosevelt and what came to be called the ‘Roosevelt Corollary’.

Let’s read an excerpt from Teddy Roosevelt’s State of the Union Address, December 1904 :

“… Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.”

The Monroe Doctrine forbade European colonization in the Americas, but did it forbid American colonization? This perversion of the Monroe Doctrine became the excuse to militarily intervene into other American countries if they were unable or unwilling to pay their international debts. Under Teddy Roosevelt, the United States built a neo-colonial wall around the Americas so that they could become the policeman of the countries inside the wall.

Then, with the ‘Good Neighbor’ policy of President Franklin Roosevelt, the United States returned once again to that principle of neutrality and non-interference in the internal affairs of another country.

Let’s read an excerpt from FRD’s March 1933 Inaugural Address:

“In the field of world policy, I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor – the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others – the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.”

This was a policy that FDR wanted to use as the basis for the United Nations and as the basis for a New Deal for the rest of the world.

But FDR’s non-colonial policy was reversed in 1999, when the United States adopted the ‘Blair Doctrine’, and returned to an expanded version of the Teddy Roosevelt Corollary, that is called the ‘Responsibility to Protect’, the R2P corollary – that provides an excuse for that re-formed Anglo-American alliance of Teddy Roosevelt, to militarily intervene in the internal affairs of another country, anywhere in the world!

Let’s now read an excerpt from the Riyadh agreement between the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the People’s Republic of China:

[in this article #10, it was specifically about Iran, which is very important, but it could apply to any country]

“10. The two sides stressed the need for relations between the GCC states and Iran to be based on following the principle of good neighbourliness and non-interference in internal affairs, respect for the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, and resolving disputes by peaceful means, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and international law, and not resorting to the use of force or threatening to use it, and maintaining regional and international security and stability.”

In contrast to that R2P corollary, we see today an emerging multi-polar world of a new good neighbor movement. President Xi recently travelled to Saudi Arabia and as a result of his meetings with the Gulf Cooperation Council, the People’s Republic of China and all of the Persian Gulf monarchies agreed on how they will mend their walls, or actually on how they will build bridges with other countries. And it’s based on the idea of being good neighbors.

Now, where did that come from, I wonder. Maybe the ‘elves’ put it in there. I don’t know but it is a sign of ‘something’.

How could anyone find any fault with anything in that statement? If this is what China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the new silk road, is based upon, why wouldn’t any government in the world want to join and want to welcome it, if it’s all about mending walls and being good neighbors!

So, imagine for a minute, that President Xi of China comes to Washington D.C. and he knocks on the front door of the White House but no one answers (the porch lights are on but no one’s home, you know what I mean). And so President Xi leaves a note in the mailbox. Eventually someone finds it and they wonder ‘hey, who put this note in here, hmmm, maybe the elves did’. Anyway, they give it to the President and the President reads the note, and the note says ‘Good morning neighbor! I saw that there’s some holes in that wall in our neighborhood, and I think we should mend it.’ And with the note is a copy of this good neighbor policy.

It would be so easy for the President of the United States to simply say ‘well now, I think I’ve seen this before, this looks like that policy of President Franklin Roosevelt, his Good Neighbor Policy! Ok, let’s be good neighbors, and let’s mend our wall.’

So the question is, are we building walls, like this stupid Green New Wall, simply to stop the New Silk Road, or are we going to use the New Silk Road as something for mending walls?

How does a poem that started out talking about mending a wall, end up getting us to talk about the new silk road and the good neighbor policy? Maybe this is only some poem about some wall, and I just spun this whole tale from my imagination. But maybe this poem made you spin a whole different tale in your imagination. And maybe there’s countless tales that are yet to be spun in other imaginations about this poem, Mending Wall.

I think that’s what Robert Frost was trying to do, to open the door to our imagination just a little bit wider, and to get us to see something in ourselves, that something in our creativity, that something that yearns for the truth. Because that something is how we solve problems, and that something is how we become good neighbors.

And maybe with the help of some elves, we might also become good hunters, but not like those rabbit hunters – but like hunters for the truth, and we can learn how to get past our walls so that we can follow after the truth, and also like hunters looking for a sign – a sign that ‘something there is that doesn’t love a wall’.

So, I hope that everyone had some fun with this poem about ‘something’ – because me and the elves sure did.

Have fun. elfishly.

[next - Robert Frost and the Cuban Missile Crisis, part 1 - who was Robert Frost]