Letters: Trashing Frost's House
Listeners offer their thoughts on an interview with Jay Parini, who taught a class on Robert Frost's poetry to two dozen youngsters who were being punished for trashing the late writer's summer home in Vermont during a party.
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ROBERT SIEGEL, host.
Now, to some of your comments on the literary story that we brought you yesterday. It was my interview with Jay Parini, who taught a class on Robert Frost's poetry to about two dozen kids.
The class was part of their sentence for trashing Frost's summer home in Vermont.
Mr. JAY PARINI (teacher): I found my self engaging with these kids in a way that changed me. I went away stunned by the power of poetry to change lives and to make people think about their world in fresh ways.
SIEGEL: Well, this concept of poetic justice made Sheila Clary(ph) of Housatonic, Massachusetts, cringe.
Does that mean that if the kids are caught trashing a chef's house, they should be sentenced to cooking classes. What's the connection? What saddens me is that the adults in this case would seem to agree with the millions of teens who drop out of high school every year that education is punishment.
And Mark Stuart(ph) of Cincinnati had a different idea for punishment involving some labors that Frost found poetic enough to write about.
Why not force the delinquents to mends some stone fences half a day, he writes, or yoke them to pull a sleigh through the snow for a couple of hours and then teach them some Frost poetry.
Well, we want to hear from you. You can write to us by going to npr.org/contact and when you get there, please let us know where you from and how you say your name.
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