Discussion: School Fires Veteran Teacher For Reading Alan Ginsberg Poem

TPM Article Topics
21

You are very fortunate to have had that opportunity. Many college kids would be envious of that reading you had.

Had I been that teacher, I might have selected another work of Ginsberg, but a single bad judgement does not warrant dismissal, perhaps a warning in his personel file, and a bit of guidance in how and what works are selected for reading aloud. Let the students find other works by Ginsberg to read on their own.

I am sure each and every 17-year-old in that school has access to the internet and can find more prurient materials within seconds if they want to. Heck, they probably all have sexy websites bookmarked on their own computers.

Firing a dedicated teacher who made one misjudgement seems outrageous to me.

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22

From what I hear ‘the kids’ are doing anyway, this does sound like romance but, more importantly, it could be taken as validation of risky, issue-frought behavior.

23

We don’t know the exact context. But the point of AP English is to learn poetry, among other things, and so it wasn’t completely out-of-the-blue.

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24

Yeah, TPM doesn’t “dig” for details; it only reports what others have already reported.

But, yes, I agree, we need to know the context and the history of this teacher’s performance to see if this was just the last straw or a single act of poor judgement. If it was the latter, dismissal seems a bit outrageous to me.

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25

Have you listened to pop radio recently?

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Yes some does leak into the cave…For most a club drub must be de rigueur.

27

I am anything but a prude, and my wife calls me a “thought criminal” for some of my un-orthodoxy. But, come on…! Public school teachers, teaching minors, really should have better judgement, and no one should be surprised by this outcome.

That said, poetry! Because…, poetry!

If you have not read it yourself, behold: Please Master

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28

Pop radio and what they have on their own computer, hell iphones, is another. We have to accept that school boards aren’t concerned with private activities of students off the clock but rather what is formally taught on the clock.

I’m fairly certain if the teacher had gone to his Board or peers in the school beforehand, it probably wouldn’t have flown.

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29

Yeah, but that’s metaphorical (saith the theologians)

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Please Master is an important poem, it’s also pretty much pornographic. Especially if it’s being read aloud, WTF? Who, in their right mind, would read that in a high school class? If it was a voluntary choice, students could chose to read it knowing what’s in it and with parental consent, OK. But to read it to a class of students who have to be there, that could be unwelcome. Same as if the instructor read aloud from Tropic of Cancer or 120 Days of Sodom. If it was America or Howl or something, OK, that would be one thing. But this is poor judgment at best.

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31

Is there more to this story? Good god, if any 17-year old was in any way offended by that, they must live under a rock. The vast majority of today’s popular music is all about doing it – and in various, colorful fashions. Most of the popular comics make jokes with language just like this – and more.

Also, this was an English class. Alan Ginsberg is a very popular and well-respected poet. You don’t have to like the subject matter but if the teacher uses it as a teaching tool during the poetry portion of class or project … then suck it up and just take good notes.

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Why? Because Columbus is usually ranked in the top twenty gay friendly cities in the country? Don’t put down a place you obviously know nothing about.

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Don’t allow your own insecurities to imagine a “put down” where there wasn’t one, Connecticut simply seems more liberal than Columbus to my Bye Bye Birdie worldview.

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Aw fer chrissakes, this is nothing like your typical numbskulls wanting to ban “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” or “Catcher in the Rye” or Harry Potter. The poem contains a very graphic and brutal depiction of sex that is guaranteed to raise the hackles of a wide range of parents in most any public school, especially if there was no forewarning ahead of the reading. Virtually every Ginsberg poem I’ve ever come across contains at least a few lines that will make some parents uncomfortable, but mere discomfort is a far thing from what “Please Master” concludes with. A public high school teacher who can’t discern the difference between “Please Master” on one hand and “In The Baggage Room At Greyhound” or “A Supermarket in California” on the other is displaying a remarkable disregard for the impact of language in the context of where it’s read, and to whom.

The excuse that language in popular entertainment is similarly graphic is irrelevant, since public school systems don’t have any control over what’s broadcast in the first place. What they can control is what takes place within their classrooms.

It also doesn’t help that Ginsberg was an outspoken member and supporter of NAMBLA. You can try all day to make the argument that his political/social opinions don’t mean his poetry shouldn’t be read, but NAMBLA is a hard thing to get past for any school audience or collection of parents.

If the teacher thought it was important to expose his students to Ginsberg’s work, he did have the option of reading aloud excerpts without the graphic sexual content; portions of “The Baggage Room at Greyhound” are wonderful and evocative examples of Ginsberg’s poetry and use of language. That should have been enough for his high school classroom.

OK, I just read the entirety of “Please, Master.” It ain’t just the last six lines, people.

Please Master

Please master can I touch your cheek

please master can I kneel at your feet

please master can I loosen your blue pants

please master can I gaze at your golden haired belly

please master can I gently take down your shorts

please master can I have your thighs bare to my eyes

please master can I take off your clothes below your chair

please master can I kiss your ankles and soul

please master can I touch lips to your muscle hairless thigh

please master can I lay my ear pressed to your stomach

please master can I wrap my arms around your white ass

please master can I lick your groin curled with soft blond fur

please master can I touch my tongue to your rosy asshole

please master may I pass my face to your balls

please master, please look into my eyes,

please master order me down on the floor,

please master tell me to lick your thick shaft

please master put your rough hands on my bald hairy skull

please master press my mouth to your prick-heart

please master press my face into your belly, pull me slowly strong thumbed

till your dumb hardness fills my throat to the base

till I swallow and taste your delicate flesh-hot prick barrel veined Please

Master push my shoulders away and stare into my eye, & make me bend over
the table

please master grab my thighs and lift my ass to your waist

please master your rough hand’s stroke on my neck your palm down my backside

please master push me up, my feet on chairs, till my hole feels the breath of
your spit and your thumb stroke

please master make me say Please Master Fuck me now Please

Master grease my balls and hairmouth with sweet vaselines

please master stroke your shaft with white creams

please master touch your cock head to my wrinkled self-hole

please master push it in gently, your elbows enwrapped around my breast

your arms passing down to my belly, my penis you touch w/ your little fingers

please master shove it in me a little, a little, a little,

please master sink your droor thing down my behind

& please master make me wiggle my rear to eat up the prick trunk

till my asshalfs cuddle your thighs, my back bent over

till I’m alone sticking out your sword stuck throbbing in me

please master pull out and slowly roll into the bottom

please master lunge it again, and withdraw to the tip

please please master fuck me again with your self, please fuck me Please

Master drive it down till it hurts me the softness the

Softness please master make love to my ass, give body to center & fuck me
for good like a girl,

tenderly clasp me please master I take me to thee,

& drive in my belly your selfsame sweet heat-rood

your fingered in solitude Denver or Brooklyn or fucked in a maiden in Paris
carlots

please master drive me thy vehicle, body of love drops, sweat fuck

body of tenderness, Give me your dog fuck faster

please master make me go moan on the table

Go moan O please master do fuck me like that

in your rhythm thrill-plunge and pull-back bounce & push down

till I loosen my asshole a dog on the table yelping with terror delight to be
loved

Please master call me a dog, an ass beast, a wet asshole

& fuck me more violent, my eyes hid with your palms round my skull

& plunge down in a brutal hard lash thru soft drip-fish

& throb thru five seconds to spurt out your semen heat

over & over, bamming it in while I cry out your name I do love you

please Master.

Anybody who thinks this reading this poem aloud to a public high school class would result in anything other than a gigantic blinking neon shitstorm is amazingly naive, and I have little sympathy for them.

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35

List of anything are usually chamber of commerce nonsense. Columbus is probably gay friendly that say, Atlanta is–a good sized gay ghetto, but plenty of socially conservative people in the area. Columbus has a very anti-semitic history–I’ve known many Jewish people (including native Midwesterners) who have found it very unwelcoming. I usually take that sort of thing as a bellweather for backwardness. Kindpf like abncient beliefs about Catholics one finds in the South.

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Bingo. Perhaps in an ideal world this controversy wouldn’t be a controversy, but individuals aren’t immune from the consequences of ignoring the world as it is. That applies equally to education and politics.

37

Probably more to the story than meets the eye–perhaps an eccentric or naive teacher protected by tenure and a kid who looked for the most outrageous thing he could find to see if the teacher would read it aloud.

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…another reason for Con-servatives pile on RuthBaderGinsberg…

/S

39

As a mild comparison, Jay-Z and Beyonce’s “Drunk in Love.” #2 on the Billboard Top 100 Chart.

I’ve been drinking, I’ve been drinking
I get filthy when that liquor get into me
I’ve been thinking, I’ve been thinking
Why can’t I keep my fingers off it, baby?
I want you, na na
Why can’t I keep my fingers off it, baby?
I want you, na na

We woke up in the kitchen saying,
“How the hell did this shit happen?”
Oh baby, drunk in love we be all night
Last thing I remember is our beautiful bodies grinding up in the club
Drunk in love

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I was finishing my undergrad thesis when I took a break to find Ginsberg reading at SciLi at Wesleyan. Cleared my mind in a jiffy! BTW Hunter College HS, also 1980s.