The Daily Bulletin Archive

The Burchfield Penney Art Center will host “Collaboration and Conflict: Robert Frost’s ‘Mending Wall,’” a  New York Council for the Humanities Conversation by David A. Sanders, professor emeritus of English at St. John Fisher College, on Sunday, September 11, at 2:00 p.m.

The New York Council for the Humanities Conversations Bureau promotes thoughtful, engaged community dialogue with 90-minute discussions based on short texts related to American identity, guided by a scholar-facilitator.

As we Americans are aware, we need to live and work alongside others from whom we differ strongly, if not radically, in outlook and opinion. Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” presents such a situation. The poem’s narrator works with his neighbor to repair the tumbled-down boundary wall that he claims they would be better off without. But when he tries to get his neighbor to discuss it, all the neighbor will say is, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

This conversation explores the principles and values behind the positions taken by each of the two men in the poem and the ways that Frost reveals the complexities of their situation. It will also consider the reasons that they work together despite their differences and, finally, how their collaboration demonstrates some of the core values of a democratic society.

The event is free and open to the public, but space is limited. Please call ext. 4534 for reservations.