Soviet-bloc communism disabused us of a lot of ideas, including pointing out that when the amplification was turned up a lot, even Robert Frost could be wrong in the voice of his farmer and neighbor character, because high, concrete and concertina wire fences don’t make good neighbors.
A rock wall in Vermont, like the one Robert Frost wrote about -Wikimedia image
Of course, even in demonstrating Frost in error, the communists made the opening clause of “Mending Fences” more poignant: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall . . .”
Residents of Berlin awoke on August 13, 1961, to discover that the Soviet-dominated East Germany had begun constructing a wall across Berlin, to keep East Berlin residents from escaping the clutches of communism and walking to freedom in West Berlin.
Go see other Bathtub posts on the topic:
- Berlin Wall’s 46th
- Berlin Wall’s 45th
- Quote of the moment: John Kennedy, June 26, 1963
- Cold War hero Günter Schabowski
And remember the poet’s telling, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
A wall Robert Frost would not love - Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz, November 1975, from West Berlin - Wikimedia photo
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Good point, in a literary critic’s good sense. I’ve added a fix, and may change it more.
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FROST was not saying that “good fences make good neighbors:” It was the Yankee farmer who was saying it. Read the whole poem, and you will see that Frost’s point of view is very much different.
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