Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Woodwork
Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:18:08 +0000

For the drunken teens who trashed poet Robert Frost’s former home in Ripton Vermont last December, justice has been served in a rather unusual way…a former Middlebury college student threw an impromptu party at the historical farmhouse last year…nearly 50 guests broke furniture and china, discharged the fire extinguishers, and ruined the carpet with the by-products of too much drink and drugs…

…their punishment goes beyond community service and public embarrassment. Twenty-five of the party-goers have been sentenced to attend a poetry class…

Prosecutor John Quinn explains…“I guess I was thinking that if these teens had a better understanding of who Robert Frost was and his contribution to our society, that they would be more respectful of other people’s property in the future…”

Jay Parini, a Frost biographer and college professor…draws on the Frost poem “The Road Not Taken” for its obvious parallels to this case. “This is where Frost is relevant. This is the irony of this whole thing. You come to a path in the woods where you can say, `Shall I go to this party and get drunk out of my mind?”’ he said. “Everything in life is choices.”

[PD*Poll: Teens sentenced to poetry classes - ParentDish](http://www.parentdish.com/2008/06/04/teens-sentenced-to-poetry-classes/)

As I recall, Frost deeply regretted not being able to take BOTH paths at the same time and vowed to take the second path (not then taken) at some unspecified date as time allowed; suggesting, of course, that either Prof Parinin is one volume short of a complete set or he thinks Frost, like these good-time Philistines from Middlebury, would have been up for some serious drugs, drinks and mayhem at his old digs the second time around.

If they really wanted to punish these libidinous miscreants, they should have been made to honor Alan Ginsberg’s hymn to American Sobriety:



“America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I’m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.”



Well…I was moved.

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