This is going to be a windy, twisty road Grasshopper, so try to stick with me. Still unirrigated after my hands-and-knees ascent and world record descent of Magnolia Road outside of Boulder, I spied this woman on the Pearl Street mall and was drawn by her Thelma and Louise sunglasses, Mr. Rogers cardigan, Miley Cyrus liquid leggings and Amish mafia boots. Then she said she was a student at Naropa University and it all made sense. They're gentle Buddhist folk who create art and poetry, some of it pretty damn graphic, and try to be conscious and hardly ever bash people for not bathing. But I thought she said the whole shebang was established by Allen Ginsberg, famous beat poet and author of Howl, which is absolutely not correct my luded out friend. Naropa was started as an Institute by a Tibetan dude, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Infidels, don't even try to say that. Ginsberg was one of the hangerson who came for some free sex and a summer session in Boulder in the mid-1970s. Wait, let's drop some acid and get hold of some of that dirty Howl shit right now.
who
coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the
tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations
which in
the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas
dreaming
of the pure vegetable kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity
outside
of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next
decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up
and
were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were
growing old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue
amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron
regi-
ments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of
advertis-
ing & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run
down
by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked
away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown
soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, - See more
at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15308#sthash.yaqXNH9T.dpuf
who
coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the
tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations
which in
the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas
dreaming
of the pure vegetable kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity
outside
of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next
decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up
and
were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were
growing old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue
amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron
regi-
ments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of
advertis-
ing & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run
down
by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked
away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown
soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, - See more
at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15308#sthash.yaqXNH9T.dpuf
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.....blah blah... who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in police cars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts...
I was not so sure about the whole thing until I got to "dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts," which is something we can all relate to. Mr. Ginsberg first went to work for
a Madison Avenue advertising agency. After five years, he
once recalled, he found himself taking part in a
consumer-research project trying to determine whether
Americans preferred the word ''sparkling'' or ''glamorous''
to describe ideal teeth. ''We already knew people associate
diamonds with 'sparkling' and furs with 'glamorous,' '' he
said. ''We spent $150,000 to learn most people didn't want
furry teeth.''
I actually like that story about Ginsberg better than his poem but I can see where he got the idea for biting detectives in the neck, forgetting punctuation and using body orifices for so many creative purposes.
Anyhoo, back to Buddhists and Trungpa, the founder of Naropa: Apparently when he set foot on US soil, he shouted, "Take me to your poets!" I personally would have wanted to find the restroom first -- I'm fussy that way. Once he found the poets, he asked them to establish a poetics department. They misunderstood and founded a poetry department.
Ginsberg recalled the intent: "It would be a way of teaching meditators about the
golden mouth and educating poets about the golden mind." He and Ann Waldman, who roomed together that summer, stayed up late
one night howling on their knees in the subway discussing what they finally came to name "The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied
Poetics." It woulda looked bad if they'd called it Ann and Allen's Excellent Summer Who Copulated Ecstatic and Insatiate With A Bottle of Beer a Sweetheart a Package of Cigarettes a Candle." Ow. Also that did not fit on a business size envelope label.
who
coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the
tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations
which in
the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas
dreaming
of the pure vegetable kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity
outside
of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next
decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up
and
were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were
growing old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue
amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron
regi-
ments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of
advertis-
ing & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run
down
by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked
away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown
soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, - See more
at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15308#sthash.yaqXNH9T.dpuf
who
coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the
tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations
which in
the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas
dreaming
of the pure vegetable kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity
outside
of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next
decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up
and
were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were
growing old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue
amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron
regi-
ments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of
advertis-
ing & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run
down
by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked
away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown
soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, - See more
at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15308#sthash.yaqXNH9T.dpuf
