Jay Parini, identified as a prof and poet, and biographer of Frost (and literary executor for Gore Vidal), writes on the punishment offered to a bunch of youths who broke into Robert Frost’s house: They were forced to study Frost’s poetry with him. This essay has possibilities--poetry, punishment, redemption, coercion and learning--but, alas, it turns into something plain and ordinary and stays as dry-as-dust for the whole of it. It reads, as The Poet might say, like the forced gait of a shuffling nag. Too bad.