Robert Frost What side of the fence ARE YOU ON asks MetroAtlanta Buy Lease Sell, in Buckhead Atlanta GA
OK, so everyone knows what it is like to have a few lines of a song running around your head for days on end. Yet on ActiveRain, a blog may do just the same thing. Its topic comes up again and again in your mind until --- well, until you realize what was needing clarification FOR YOU from that post. That is what happened for me with the post about fences.
Sometimes thoughts find their own way through more than one level in our minds. We often see blog posts complaining about Clients' behavior. Not paying attention, not following through on what they promised , not, not, not ... The issues are the same when Clients' complaints about us are heard.
So what does it boil down to in this case? Why did the FENCES post follow me around? Why did I go back and search for a copy of the poem? Why did I re-read it, twice, and then leave a mega-long comment on the Clarks' Blog that day? I think at first, I took the post at surface level. There is land and its boundaries SHOULD be accurate and could be fenced. Then the issues arose: improper placement of the fence, for example, followed by logical answers and solutions: perhaps a survey. So that couldn't be the reason for the refrain float-- too factual and too clingy!
Skipping all the steps, (I'll spare you the meander through my mind) what was pestering me was a broader reflection. I was hung up on the idea of how many times, how many thousands of times, the line from Robert Frost's poem has been used in a manner that was so opposite what he had intended. Perhaps then we may see the reasons for the reasons for Frost's words "Spring is the mischief in me".
Was Frost in favor of the fence or just being a good neighbor by repairing it since it took two to fix it?
Then the reason for the blog post floating around incessantly in my mind became even more clear. I was analyzing how do we, as professional real estate agents, listen when Clients are speaking to us? How do we know that we haven't missed something important when our Clients are communicating with us?
Without further ado - hopefully you will stop by and see the Clarks' post. And discover the reasons for my own reflections on paying attention in conversations! My mega comment is here.
Have a happy day --
Lynn
Dear AR friends - Thanks for reminding me of the oft-repeated quote above from Robert Frost. But in what context did Frost use the phrase? "Good fences make good neighbors." The US Poet, born 1874 in San Francisco, moved to New England at age eleven with his mother after his father died. As a young married man, Frost and his beloved wife Elinor lived in England. Circumstances made a return to New Hampshire necessary. Then back to England and back to New England, where Frost lived on several different farms over the years. During his long life, Frost wrote many poems whose messages were seemingly clear - almost reports on events but those writings carried insights into human behavior and emotions. A closer reading of the poem "Mending Wall" implies that - in fact - Frost was not so sure of whether fences were a good thing or not. (See BOLDed lines.) That is the truth of Frost as a poet - his vision cut through scenes and focused on behavior. Who Frost was and what he really had to say is the subject of Randall Jarrell's essay, "The Other Frost". Jarrell stated that "[Frost was] the subtlest and saddest of poets" whose "extraordinary strange poems express an attitude that, at its most extreme, makes pessimism a hopeful evasion." During his long life, Frost received 44 honorary degrees and many government honors. He recited poetry at President Kennedy's inauguration. He visited foreign countries as the embodiment of American Poetry. Most enduring reward, however, about ten years after his beloved wife had died, Frost had the wonderful luck to make a close and lasting friendship with another woman, Kathleen Morrison, who acted as his official secretary & business manager. She managed his affairs for him and she typed his writings up for him. Have a happy day, "MENDING WALL" by Robert Frost (1874-1963)
See what you think the phrase means after reading the poem ...
Lynn
(Can you tell I am a devoted fan of the poet Robert Frost? LOL)
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:
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I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on 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,
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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.
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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.
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Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
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.
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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.
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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 offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down!" I could say "Elves" to him,
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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,
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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."
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