The following blog entry was written by Sarah Solomon, an intern here at READ.

Poetry can be read for pleasure, but have you ever heard of poetry being used as punishment?

25 partygoers in Middlebury, Vermont hadn't heard of that either until they were signed up for a mandatory poetry session as punishment for breaking into Robert Frost's house at the Homer Noble Farm. Breaking into a famous poets’ house is usually not a good idea.

A 17-year-old employee of Middlebury College thought it would be fun to hang out at Robert Frost's house, so he decided to throw a party. Over 50 people showed up, and by the end of the party there was broken china, broken windows, and a chair tossed in the fireplace. The total damage to the house was estimated at $10,600. That's a lot of money!

As punishment for those who wished to wipe their criminal records clean, two sessions of "Frost Instruction" were administered, each lead by Jay Parini, a professor at Middlebury College.

Parini used Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" to teach the students a lesson. Parini said that in this poem, the speaker is deciding between making one of two choices. Parini believes that this applies directly to the students' behavior – each must make a choice as to how they want to live his or her life.

The Road Not Taken
  - Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Actually, this poem is often misread. Most people believe this poem to be about making the right choices in life. However, Frost's underlying meaning is significantly different.

In fact, the speaker in the poem is relating to the listener that the choice he made just so happened to lead him to where he is now, and if he had taken the other path he probably wouldn't have ended up so differently. In the last stanza the speaker is implying that one day in the future when he is telling his story, he will try to teach a lesson and say that the certain path he took made all the difference, even though he might not believe it.

Click here to read the CNN article on the Homer Noble Farm break in.

It's Allen Ginsberg's birthday. He'd be celebrating in style, but he can't because he's dead. Instead, you should celebrate by reading some rowdy poetry. In case you don't know, Allen Ginsberg saw "the best minds of [his] generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked," or so he says in his famous poem, Howl. The 'best minds' to which he refers are presumably his cohorts of the Beat Movement. If you've forgotten who the Beats were and what they were all about, check out my blog post from back in the day (read: September) by clicking here.

Otherwise, enjoy one of my favorite Ginsberg poems, A Supermarket in California. In this surreal commentary on society and the literary world, Ginsberg finds two of his literary influences in the supermarket.

A Supermarket in California

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the
streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles
full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! --- and you,
Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the
meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price
bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and
followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting
artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does
your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel
absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to
shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in
driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you
have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and
stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

The following blog entry was written by Sarah Chassé, a copy editor of READ, Writing, and a whole bunch of other Weekly Reader magazines.

I am a passionate fan of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. I stumbled upon it while channel surfing a few years ago, and I've been hooked ever since. But each spring, as I gear up to watch the finals on TV, eager for a new spelling champ to be crowned, my friends and family look at me like I'm a little crazy. They say: What's so great about a SPELLING bee? And why would I want to watch one live on television? Well, here are three good reasons:

(1) If you're a word nerd, this is your Super Bowl. Learn some fun, truly bizarre words (appoggiatura! succedaneum!chiaroscurist!) that you can toss into your next essay to wow your teacher.
(2) Ding! That's the sound no speller wants to hear; it means he or she has spelled a word wrong and is out of the running to win. But for spectators safely in the audience, waiting for the bell creates big-time suspense! (Although, because the word is spelled correctly on the bottom of your TV screen, you know before the speller does whether it's right. That can be kind of painful to watch.)
(3) You never know what kind of wacky antics you'll see at the bee. Take 1997's finals, when winner Rebecca Sealfon was so excited that she pumped her arms in the air while shouting each letter to her final word (euonym):
 
Or 2006, when Akshay Buddiga was so nervous he fainted at the microphone, but still managed to spell his word alopecoid and advance to the next round!
 
Are you convinced? If so, check out the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee Championship Finals tonight at 8 p.m. ET on ABC!

by Catherine Sinks

His unknown age
   a dark square house
      a couple of feet away
a white home waits
   far off in the distance
      divine thoughts run through his head

His face caught
   with a blank stare
His shadow 
   more than a shadow
His eyes 
      obscured

I can't even remember
the color of his eyes

His hands
closed

But they were
   always open to me.

Congratulations to Catherine. She was a runner-up in Writing magazine's Treasured Objects Contest. Students wrote about their favorite things in such insightful and powerful ways. Check back for the next two weeks to see more runners-up.