leonardcohenforum.com

You were the only person I would have left a 'critique' for on the board and now that is solved. Sorry to have bothered you and the poem.

Laurie,
You seem to know your stuff but why the insistance on always being "correct"?
You seem to arc-up whenever a recipient of your assistance differs with your opinion.
And (should avoid beginning a sentence with and ) you then wipe off all further interaction with that person.
Is being "right" so important to you that you need to do that?
I think if you dealt with differences of opinion more acceptingly, you may find things in life a little sweeter.

Matj

I'm not an expert on poetry, beyond being an avid reader, so I was intrigued by the poem/critique.
I agree with some of what Alan Alda says, I think the piece is over written in places and has a tendency to repetition.
But, equally, I think Alan's dismantling (in literary terms) of the piece misses the passsion of the moment about which Jimmy is writing.
What intrigues me is the fact that Alan takes umbrage at Jimmy's defending his own work.
Funny how that runs through critics (as a generality). They don't like to be criticised.
Can give but can't take.
Surely, Alan, you might continue to engage rather than going off in a huff?

And, yes, that is Mending Wall, the Frost poem.

Thank you dangermouse for the appreciative comments. This particular poem was written many years after the event... and yes, it did go through many visions and revisions... Some poems don't call for or demand constant honing and then others are never really the finished article even many years later!! I have reworked poems that I thought at one time were perfect only to realise that they were far from that... and then again sometimes I think maybe I should have left well enough alone...

Thanks again
Jimmy

Red Poppy wrote:And, yes, that is Mending Wall, the Frost poem.

??
What is?

MENDING WALL
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 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 offence.
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."


How we interact with others requires that we observe certain social mores. If we don't, society will splinter, crack, disassemble and trust will be lost. How would we find the Truth then?

Manna,
it was just a reference to a passing comment by Jimmy.
I was referring to the RF poem which Byron has kindly posted.
Life is short but sometimes it seems long .