Thanks for kicking off the forum, Gerry. Here's the passage I bungled yesterday from Amy Lowell's review of North of Boston in the New Republic: “He writes in classic metres in a way to set the teeth of all the poets of the older schools on edge; and he writes in classic metres, and uses inversions and cliches whenever he pleases, those devices so abhorred by the newest generation. He goes his own way, regardless of anyone else’s rules, and the result is a book of unusual power and sincerity.” 

I found myself thinking about "The Pasture" and our discussion and ended up with quite a different reaction to the poem.  (I should say at the outset that in the tradition of my undergrad college's New Criticism approach, I'm just reacting on a personal level to the poem without delving into Frost's biography or subsequent literary criticism .)   

In the end, I found the poem much more appealing than I initially thought.  it seemed to me that it was an invitation to share in an experience of renewal or rebirth , to cast asidewhat has withered away in the past ,  and to look toward a future of clearing vision and new life.   That works for me on the literal level of seasonal tasks , on  the metaphorical  level of envisaging a new poetry ( with a nod as mentioned in class  to the muses of  the springs of Parnassus ), and  on the  more universal  human level of anticipating personal change.  I did  find the poem welcoming. I think that the repeated  present progressive "I'm going out to" lends an immediacy  to the moment and an engaging  familiarity of tone to the invitation that is then echoed in the repeated  and inclusive and concluding " You come too."   I  wonder if the " I shan't be gone long" isn't  an assurance that the experience to which we are invited, be it reading the following poems or life's ephemeral one, won't be too long or onerous.  All this may well be pushing it on a search for meaning!   On to seeing just what lies ahead in Frost's pasture.

My reaction was very similar to Janet's.  I wondered about that little heifer. Why separate it from its mother, if that's what the speaker intends? Then, considering that Frost made this poem the preface to his breakthrough collection North of Boston and to his Collected Poems, preceding even the Table of Contents (I think), I wondered if the little heifer might suggest one of the poems to follow. Even if it happens to have been written some years before, it becomes new-born in the encounter with the listener.  Frost once remarked that a poet should never say directly what he or she can say indirectly.

I'm surprised more wasn't made of the poem's title as I tried to get at during class.  If the poem were simply about repairing a wall (which we know it isn't) the title could have been "Wall Mending,"  especially w/ what John found about connecting it with A Tuft of Flowers by Frost himself.   Seeing the wall as something that mends makes the range of possible interpretations broader.  

I suspect the neighbor repeated his father's aphorism every year as part of their ritual.

A separate point about class participation; one thing that didn't occur this week that did the first, is that hardly anyone  raised a hand in order to indicate they wanted to speak.  With such a large group, I think doing so is a good practice.

Nice, Janet. That present progressive brings you immediately into the space of the poem and the  presence of the poet.

   I was just reading his essay on the Figure of the Poem in which he says a poem is an act of discovery for the poet first. He has an inkling of where he is going when he puts own to paper , but won’t know for sure until he gets there. So the reader is invited into the very act if the writing, as it were

In listening to last week's discussion I realized i realized I gave the wrong reference to the Coppolla's movie "The Outsiders."  (plus I made a typo in my message to Judy).  Anyway, Johnny and Ponyboy, two young outcast teenagers, have run away and are hiding in an abandoned house.  They are up at dawn trying to figure out what they are going to do and marveling at the sight of the golden sky.  Coppolla's colors in the cinematography are pretty gorgeous.  The two boys framed against the sky.  Out of the blue Ponyboy recites Frost's poem and says he learned it in school and did not really understand until he saw the morning dawn.  The poem returns near the end of the movie where Johnny is dying and whispers in Johnny's ear "stay gold."  You can find it on YouTube.