I Have a Dream

...to read a classic American novel. Any suggestions?

~Alicia

deFrost

Aunt Julie sent us this article this morning:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080602/ap_on_re_us/poetic_justice

I don't know how I feel about it. I think the group should have been really punished for what they did -made to pay money, all that jazz. I find studying Frost a privilege and an enjoyment, and they're dishing him up as punishment. For those kids, maybe this punishment is worse than forking over cold hard cash. Little impudent imps.

This article shed some light on my feelings. Steve told me to challenge him with a poem, and I have yet to do it. And so here it is. Let's delve into the Road Less Traveled. I really want to take a second look at it. He says the woods are yellow, and I think he means something by that. I want to rip this poem apart and wring a new meaning out of it so I don't spend the rest of my life with a perpetual eye roll.

I hope you find it extremely diverting.

Did I read that right?

The yahoo link this evening caught my eye:
Robert Frost house vandals punished with "The Road Not Taken"
And here's the story:
From bad to verse: Vandals get classroom penance
MIDDLEBURY, Vt. - Call it poetic justice: More than two dozen young people who broke into Robert Frost's former home for a beer party and trashed the place are being required to take classes in his poetry as part of their punishment.

Using "The Road Not Taken" and another poem as jumping-off points, Frost biographer Jay Parini hopes to show the vandals the error of their ways — and the redemptive power of poetry.
"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.
The vandalism occurred at the Homer Noble Farm in Ripton, where Frost spent more than 20 summers before his death in 1963. Now owned by Middlebury College, the unheated farmhouse on a dead-end road is used occasionally by the college and is open in the warmer months.
On Dec. 28, a 17-year-old former Middlebury College employee decided to hold a party and gave a friend $100 to buy beer. Word spread. Up to 50 people descended on the farm, the revelry turning destructive after a chair broke and someone threw it into the fireplace.

When it was over, windows, antique furniture and china had been broken, fire extinguishers discharged, and carpeting soiled with vomit and urine. Empty beer cans and drug paraphernalia were left behind. The damage was put at $10,600.

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.

Parini, 60, a Middlebury College professor who has stayed at the house before, was eager to oblige when Quinn asked him to teach the classes. He donated his time for the two sessions.
On Wednesday, 11 turned out for the first, with Parini giving line-by-line interpretations of "The Road Not Taken" and "Out, Out-," seizing on parts with particular relevance to draw parallels to their case.

"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!"
Dressed casually, one with his skateboard propped up against his desk, the young people listened to Parini and answered questions when he pressed. Then a court official asked them to describe how their arrests and the publicity affected them.
"I was worried about my family," said one boy, whose name was withheld because the so-called diversion program in which took part is confidential. "I'll be carrying on the family name and all that. And with this kind of thing tied to me, it doesn't look very good."
Another said: "After this, I'm thinking about staying out of trouble, because this is my last chance."
"My parents' business in town was affected," said a girl.
When the session ended, the vandals were offered snacks — apple cider, muffins, sliced fruit — but none partook. They went straight for the door, several declining comment as they walked out of the building. The next session is Tuesday.
"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."
~Steven

A Sad Tale

I just moved into a new apartment where I won't have internet access, and so my blog posts will be non-existant for a bit -except for the few times I might be able to make it to the library to access the internet there.
So for the most part of June and July, I bid you all a very fond farewell.
~Steven

They Shall Twain Be (of more than) One (meaning)

Here is Twain (picture compliments of pbs.org). I love him. There's something remarkable about sarcasm.

Oh Lord, Our Father

O Lord, our father

Our young patriots, idols of our hearts,

Go forth to battle - be Thou near them!

With them, in spirit, we also go forth

From the sweet peace of our beloved firesides To smite the foe.

O Lord, our God,

Help us to tear their soldiers

To bloody shreds with our shells;

Help us to cover their smiling fields

With the pale forms of their patriot dead; Help us to drown the thunder of

the guns With the shrieks of their wounded,

Writhing in pain.

Help us to lay waste their humble homes

With a hurricane of fire;

Help us to wring the hearts of their

Unoffending widows with unavailing grief;

Help us to turn them out roofless

With their little children to wander unfriended The wastes of their

desolated land

In rags and hunger and thirst,

Sports of the sun flames of summer

And the icy winds of winter,

Burdened in spirit, worn with travail,

Imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -

For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord,

Blast their hopes,

Blight their lives,

Protract their bitter pilgrimage,

Make heavy their steps,

Water their way with their tears,

Stain the white snow with the blood

Of their wounded feet!

We ask it in the spirit of love -

Of Him who is the source of love,

And Who is the ever-faithful

Refuge and Friend of all that are sore beset And seek His aid with humble

and contrite hearts.

Amen

~Alicia

Snow Sense at All, Frost!

I'm posting this poem of Robert Frost's here for the benefit of all who wish to enjoy it, most especially Alicia.
It's a favorite of mine and, as "lovely, dark, and deep" as the woods described in the text. Oh, and the photo above was taken by my sister-in-law Brittany.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening


Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sounds the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

~Steven

Another Layer of Frosting

In response to Alicia's last post, I have to say a bit about one of my favorite of Frost's poems, Mending Wall:

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Now, this version is taken from the Literature Netwrok website, so it isn't quite as Frost laid it down. It's not separated into stanzas, but I believe the wording is right.

People come away from this poem with scores of deep meanings about governments, war and peace, and even anarchy. Now I don't claim to be an expert on Frost, but I hardly find evidence enough in a Formalist look at this piece to go so far as to suggest any of these meanings. I offer here a bit of an essay I wrote about Mending Wall.

"The title of the poem helps give light to a deeper understanding of the poem’s theme. The title suggests a meaning of more than a chore of mending a fallen wall. Mending can be viewed as an adjective describing the wall as a means of mending friendships. Frost does not attach the two words with an article (Mending a Wall, or Mending the Wall) which allows the title to serve a more suggestive purpose. Indeed, in examination of the neighbor’s old family saying “Good fences make good neighbors,” it might be suggested that it is not the separation that a wall provides to distance people that makes them “good neighbors.” It could be the opportunity provided to spend time working together which serves to strengthen a friendship and draws neighbors together."

This take on the poem shows a certain irony in the narrator's observation of his neighbor, "He moves in darness as it seems to me". The whole time, his neighbor repeats the saying hoping that the narrator will finally understand. It is really the narrator who could be said to be "in the dark" about the notion of what makes good neighbors. People usually read through it siding with the narrator thinking how daft is the "old-stone savage" neighbor. Now when I read it, I see so much of youthful inexperience in the narrator, and so much of age-earned wisdom in the neighbor.

I find more in the structure and elements found in the text to support this sort of a take on the poem. It's a lot more interesting than an essay on politics.

~Steven