Legal News

A Poetry Punishment for Vermont Vandals

By Dan Slater

So was I once myself a swinger of birches;
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood — from “Birches,” by Robert Frost

Last December, two metaphorical roads diverged in the Vermont woods, and, teenagers being teenagers, they took the road long-traveled by teenagers — directly to the party. This party happened to be at the historic Vermont home of the late poet Robert Frost, where twenty-eight teenagers broke in, drank beer and trashed the place.

For their transgressions, each was found guilty, mostly of trespassing, and sentenced to two sessions of study with the Frost biographer, poet, and professor Jay Parini — a “punishment,” notes The New Yorker, for which Middlebury students normally pay a hefty sum. The prosecutor, John Quinn, told the magazine, “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.”

For the first class, Parini reportedly turned to Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken.” Parini told the students: “Believe me, if you’re a teenager, you’re always in the damned woods. Literally . . . And metaphorically you’re in the woods, in your life. Look at you here, in court diversion! If that isn’t ‘in the woods,’ what the hell is ‘in the woods’? You’re in the woods!”

For more on the value of this so-called “guilt punishment,” go to Dan Markel’s discussion of the case at PrawfsBlog. And for those of you moved on this Wednesday morning to revel in the beauty of Frost’s words and take comfort in his grandfatherly baritone, click here for his readings of “The Road Not Taken,” “The Pasture,” “Mowing,” “Birches,” “After Apple-Picking,” and “The Tuft of Flowers.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 04, 2008 (boomark / email).