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How did Robert Frost combine meter with conversational speech?

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Robert Frost, 1954 — Robert Frost “Good fences make good neighbors.” Robert Frost crafted some of the most indelible lines in American poetry in such poems as “Mending Wall” (1914).

Robert Frost was widely admired for his ability to master traditional metrical forms while setting them against the natural, irregular rhythms of everyday, unadorned speech. By doing so, he revitalized traditional stanzas and lines, demonstrating that one could be "new" while employing "old ways".1

Frost’s most significant technical innovation in this regard occurred in his dramatic narratives, such as "Mending Wall" and "Home Burial," where he utilized blank verse—unrhymed iambic pentameter. In these works, he successfully unified the strict, regular pentameter line with the unpredictable cadences of human conversation. This approach allowed his poetry to maintain a sense of terseness and concision while avoiding the perceived looseness of free verse, which he famously compared to playing tennis without a net.1