The Core Knowledge Blog

More than two dozen young people who broke into Robert Frost’s former Vermont home for a party and trashed the place are being required to take classes in his poetry as part of their punishment. Homer Noble Farm, an unheated farmhouse on a dead-end road, which is now part of Middlebury College, was vandalized last December at a party attended by more than 50 people. The Associated Press reports about 25 ultimately entered pleas, or were accepted into a program that allows them to wipe their records clean, provided they undergo the Frost instruction.

“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,” said prosecutor John Quinn.

On Wednesday, Frost biographer Jay Parini attempted to show the vandals the error of their ways and the redemptive power of poetry. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” he thundered, citing Frost’s The Road Not Taken. He called the line symbolic of the need to make choices in life.

Frost might also have observed that good fences make good neighbors.