Robert Frost

     Mending Wall is a wonderful look at how most people deal with other people (neighbors).  I believe the central idea of this poem is the phrase, "Good fences make good neighbors."  I love how the 'pine tree neighbor' is completely indifferent to the fact that he has a neighbor.  He just wants to fix that darn wall so he doesn't have to see his fellow man.  Why let others in when you already have so many problems of your own?  The 'apple orchard neighbor' is 'on the fence' about letting his neighbor in.  He seems to want to strike up a relationship with the other fellow but the wall needs mending.  The wall could also symbolize racism/bigotry now that I think about it..........
     Home Burial reads like a short story instead of a poem.  I felt the sorrow, anger, and pain of the husband and wife.  The loss of a child is an experience that I NEVER want to have.  This poem reminded me of a movie I recently saw entitled Rabbit Hole.  It is a look into the lives of a husband and wife who have lost a child.  The poem and the movie show the decay of a relationship with the hope that the relationship is strong enough to work itself out.  It always seems someone needs to be the stronger of the two in any relationship and in the poem (as well as the movie) the husband is the strongest.  "Can't a man speak of his own child he's lost?"  This is a man who is willing to talk through the tragedy and his wife is still grieving in her own way.  The relationship is strained and we can only hope he WILL follow her and bring her back by force.
     Design is a beautiful little poem about life and death.  It's about the strong overpowering the weak.  It asks the question if design actually fits into the whole scheme of life.  Maybe it is Frost's questioning of God as designer/creator.  "What but design of darkness to appall?----If design govern in a thing so small."  Maybe Frost just saw a spider on a white heal-all and wrote about it.  Who knows?  I usually have a hard time getting to the 'meat' of poetry, but this Frost fellow seems rather wonderful.