Robert Frost Vandals Forced to Listen to Madman Rave About Poetry

Remember the 28 teenagers who broke into Robert Frost’s summer home and trashed it during a drunken party? I wrote about it here. Rather than, I dunno, punish them or something, they are sentenced to listen to the nicest poetry in the world- as screamed at them by a madman.

According to CNN here, this is their punishment:

Twenty-eight people — all but two of them teenagers — were charged, mostly with trespassing.

About 25 ultimately entered pleas — or were accepted into a program that allows them to wipe their records clean — provided they underwent the Frost instruction. Some will also have to pay for some of the damage, and most were ordered to perform community service in addition to the classroom sessions. The man who bought the beer is the only one who went to jail; he got three days behind bars.

And the classes? Here come the ravings of the madman-

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” he thundered, reciting the opening line of the first poem, which he called symbolic of the need to make choices in life.

“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.”

Even the setting had parallels, he said: “Believe me, if you’re a teenager, you’re always in the damned woods. Literally, you’re in the woods — probably too much you’re in the woods. 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!”

So to be clear, there is no punishment in the land of the woods? Sheesh.