Poetic Justice

When a bunch of youths threw a party in the former home of poet Robert Frost in Middlebury, Vermont, their punishment was made to fit the crime.

On Dec. 28, a 17-year-old former Middlebury College employee decided to hold a party and gave a friend $100 to buy beer. After word spread, around 50 people ended up at the farm; when the party was over, windows, antique furniture and china had been broken, fire extinguishers discharged, and the carpet ruined with urine and vomit. Drug paraphernalia and beer cans were also left behind. All in all, $10,600 in damage was done.

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. Only the man who bought the beer was sent to jail, for 3 days.

Prosecutor John Quinn asked Frost biographer Jay Parini to teach the vandals a class on the esteemed poet as part of their punishment, “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 and would also learn something from the experience.”

Parini donated his time for the two sessions that will focus on paralleling Frost’s poems, "The Road Not Taken" and "Out, Out-," with the actions of the young vandals.

"It's a lesson learned, that's for sure," said one of them, 22-year-old Ryan Kenyon, whose grandmother worked as hairdresser in the 1960s and knew Frost. "It did bring some insight. People do many things that they don't realize the consequences of. It shined a light, at least to me."

Frost spent more than 20 summers before his death in 1963 at the secluded farmhouse, now owned by Middlebury College.