Defending Allen Ginsberg In The Comments
A teacher in Colorado comes under fire for teaching “Howl”
to sixteen-year-olds and the columnist online calls it lewd filth
and misspells Allen’s last name like he’s on the Supreme Court
and I guess Colorado is once again lonesome for her heroes and
“A” alliterates pointless poetry for shock, for shame and
“B” calls the teacher a pedophile who gets off on reading porn to kids
and “C” wants to bring back Frost and Chaucer to which I retort
that it’s no more vulgar than The Canterbury Tales, see the 1957
obscenity trial, read the poem if you want to understand
twentieth century poetry or hell, the twentieth century, starving
hysterical naked, it’s a critique of the military-industrial complex
which is the real obscenity, and the worst, most closed minds
of my generation try to feed me to Moloch:
“D” invokes the Piss Christ, or something, and
“E” says You need to read a book called The Bible, and
“F” tells me I have no wisdom or foresight and
“G” says Grapes of Wrath was once considered obscene,
thanks “G”, but five people downvote her comment and
“H” tells me my four degrees did me no good and
“I” says I’ve been brainwashed, she’s praying for me
with prayer hand emojis and I say I pray that she’ll someday read
and understand a book, which, I admit, amounts to feeding the trolls
who lunge at my comment like pigeons to crumbs, and
“J”, in humorless protest, says read Milton or Shakespeare, not porn
so I say “Moloch” is an allusion to Paradise Lost and I Kings and
“K” repeats the Piss Christ thing and
“L” says poetry professors have big egos and I quote William Blake:
To generalize is to be an idiot for which
“M” gives me a frowny face emoticon and
“N” says Tom C. Hunley, idiot and
“O” puts an angry face next to each of my comments,
calls me pathetic and arrogant, says I have no morals, and
“P” says I’m narcissistic and indoctrinated
I’m with you on the Internet
where you’re madder than I am
I’m with you on the Internet
where you’re lousy writers on the same dreadful typewriter
and I point to the empathy for Carl Solomon in Part III
and for a sunflower elsewhere in the book
and I say yes I want your teens to learn such gentle kindness
they’re sure not getting it at home I say your imbecile kids
are the ones who bully mine for being bookish and I say
what really concerns me, more than what kids read, is adults
who haven’t read “Howl” (how?)
who still feel qualified to comment on it
who have butchered the absolute heart of the poem of life
who have zero background in literature but
who still feel qualified to influence curricula and
“Q” says the poem reads like a template
for a Hillary college speech or a Joe Biden campaign speech and
“R” uses all caps to call it SICKENING and NAUSEATING and
“S” calls the teacher a progressive missionary guilty of malpractice and
“T” says I have no idea of what 90% of the poem meant
and what I did understand, I thought very dark and inappropriate and
“U” wants the teacher charged with child abuse
and contributing to delinquency of minors, and
“V” tells America to homeschool its children and I want to
tell her Allen Ginsberg gave America his all and now he’s nothing, has been
since his memorial service at St. Marks Cathedral, which I attended, and
“W” says Drag queens in libraries and now this and
“X” wants police involved and
“Y” says It’s Woodstock values 24/7 these days and compares
“Howl” to “Man from Nantucket” and
“zzzz” I fall asleep with quandariness trying to decide which comment
to pick apart if any and I wonder what sphinx of cement and aluminum
bashed open their skulls and ate up all of their brains and imagination.
Bio.: Tom C. Hunley directs the MFA Creative Writing program at Western Kentucky University, where he has taught since 2003. He won the 2020 Rattle Chapbook Prize, and in 2021, C&R Press published What Feels Like Love: New and Selected Poems.