Allen As A Teacher––Notes
for Boulder Theater Premiere of Howl As
Eliot Katz pointed out in a rejected op-ed response letter to The New
York Times Review of Books––Allen Ginsberg was not interested in free
speech and individual freedom and uninterested in organized politics or
improving government. Not many students have teachers who write speeches like
“No Taxation Without Representation,” delivered by Ed Sanders & Tuli Kupferberg at Pentagon
Exorcism, October 21, 1967. Allen
taught by his own example. At volatile Democratic National Convention, August
1968, he chanted “Om” for seven hours. July 1978, middle of Kerouac School
Summer Writing Program––with Peter Orlovsky, Daniel
Ellsberg & others––he protested nuclear proliferation, performing
nonviolent sitting meditation on railroad tracks blocking trains bearing plutonium
and fissile materials to Rocky Flats nuclear facility. Arrested twice that
summer, he found time to write “Plutonian Ode.” In 1992, production at Rocky
Flats was discontinued. What teacher shuts down nuclear trigger factory? He was
the kind of person you remember forever, his impact incalculable. I do not
recall any adult except him telling me, “There are liars and creeps and
bunglers on both sides, so the only thing you can do is not get tangled in
everybody’s rationalizations, including your own.” 12
October 2010 [Published in The Groundless Ground: Poems 2010-2014. © 2014 by Jim
Cohn.] |
APPEARS IN The Groundless Ground: Poems 2010-2014 |