IS THIS BULLSHIT OR APPROPRIATE?

[HairOfTheDog]

Kate Carter, superintendent of schools confirmed on March 4, 2015 that David Olio, an English teacher at South Windsor High School, CT was suspended.

The suspension stems from his reading of the Allen Ginsberg poem "Please Master" in class recently. Carter considers the reading "highly inappropriate material being presented by a teacher to students in a senior English class."

The educator Olio has won several teaching awards and was committed to teaching senior high school students about diversity and thinking critically.

The poet Ginsberg (June 3 1926 - April 5 1997) opposed sexual repression, militarism and economic materialism. He is best known for his poem "Howl" in which he denounces what he perceives to be destruction that is caused in the US by conformity and capitalism.

Here's the poem, "Please Master", written in 1968:
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.


Do you think Mr. Olio deserves to be suspended for presenting the poem to 17 and 18 year old students?

[Duchess]

I don't know, I'm waffling.

[Maggot]

She should be fired.

[HairOfTheDog]

She should be fired.

Superintendent Kate Carter or Educator David Olio?

[HairOfTheDog]

Allen Ginsberg reading his poem, "Please Master".

[Midwest Spy]

That's not suitable material for high school.

It's basically Penthouse Forum in the guise of poetry. I would not want that read to my kids.

The suspension is well earned.

[Duchess]

Alrighty! It pains me to discover that I'm not nearly as open minded as I think I am. I'm a little freaked out hearing a man say a lot of that.

[sally]

I think it's inappropriate and I can see where people wouldn't be comfortable listening to that, especially a bunch of 17 year olds. It almost caused Duchess to vomit and she's in her 60s. He should have at least asked for permission first.

Just because someone calls something poetry or art doesn't mean it is, not to me anyway. I haven't read any other work from the old gay Jew, but that particular poem is a bunch of garbage.

[Duchess]

I'm more bothered that I'm bothered by it. I wouldn't want my Mom or Gramma to hear that.

[HairOfTheDog]

Alrighty! It pains me to discover that I'm not nearly as open minded as I think I am. I'm a little freaked out hearing a man say a lot of that.

It's a highly provocative poem, no doubt. Ginsberg wasn't subtle.

To me, Olio seems like a great educator and one who wants students to be affected (positively or negatively) by the literature they're analyzing, and then be able to develop and articulate their opinions about the works effectively.

Here he is teaching a class about close collaborative reading for The Teaching Channel, incorporating Core Standards.
https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/a...hoices-nea

If he'd been teaching younger students, I'd say it was definitely an inappropriate poem for the classroom due to its sexual explicitness. For college prep and senior students, I'm not sure and I'm not surprised that some students and parents complained to the school board.

(If Olio had used "Please Master" in a college setting, I'd have no mixed feelings -- all for getting the brains and tongues stirred up with some Ginsberg.)

[sally]

I personally wouldn't care if that was read to my 17 year old, he's mature enough to handle it, but Olio had to have known it would at least piss some parents off. It was a stupid move. It's high school not college.

[HairOfTheDog]

Just because someone calls something poetry or art doesn't mean it is, not to me anyway. I haven't read any other work from the old gay Jew, but that particular poem is a bunch of garbage.

Well, he's a dead gay Jew now, but he wrote a lot of his best known and most acclaimed works when he was a young gay Jew and voice of the Beat movement.

He's definitely not for everyone. "Please Master" isn't one of my favorites. I like most of his works a lot, though I don't agree with a lot of his stances.

I agree with you that Olio was stupid if he didn't expect to cause controversy and possibly face severe consequences for his choice in this case. I haven't seen any comments or explanation from him.

MS: I don't think the poem is comparable to something featured between the Beaver Hunt and centerfold pages of Penthouse. But, like Larry Flint, Ginsberg was hit with obscenity charges when his best known poem, "Howl" was published. That was when sodomy was illegal in every state. He was ultimately victorious though. The court ruled that "Howl" was not obscene, adding, "Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?"

"Howl" is a lengthy poem. It includes reflections about sex (hetero and homo), drugs, war, etc... It is one of my favorites by Ginsberg.

"America" is also good, and shorter. No sex.

[sally]

"Howl" would have been more appropriate.

I viewed "Please Master" similar as MS. It wasn't anything that was thought provoking to me. It was like when I went to the MOMA and there was a film of two naked people tossing a beach ball back and forth to each other. I would not call that art, I'd call it a bunch of nonsense and a waste of my time.

[HairOfTheDog]

"Howl" would have been more appropriate.

I viewed "Please Master" similar as MS. It wasn't anything that was thought provoking to me. It was like when I went to the MOMA and there was a film of two naked people tossing a beach ball back and forth to each other. I would not call that art, I'd call it a bunch of nonsense and a waste of my time.

I hear ya. It's not a poem that I've felt inspired to read after the first time.

Back in the 60s when it was written, "Please Master" was way more shocking and unexpected than it would be if it were written in today's culture.

Ginsberg wasn't ashamed and hiding in the closet, obviously. I think he helped open the door for more writers, comedians, artists, and people in general to say "fuck it" to societal conformity and all-PC-all-the-time.

The impacts of some of his poems are greater than the content of them, IMO.

[Midwest Spy]

^^ shock value is all well and good... in the appropriate setting.

[HairOfTheDog]

^ Did you come up with that deep thought all by yourself, MS?

[sally]

The impacts of some of his poems are greater than the content of them, IMO.

If I was a high school senior and asked my thoughts on the poem that would be about the only thing I could come up with. That and it made me want to hurl, end of story. There is really nothing to analyze in the poem itself. "Howl" would have been a more challenging assignment and he'd probably still have his job.

[Midwest Spy]

^ Did you come up with that deep thought all by yourself, MS?

I'm just reiterating my opinion that the teacher who used this material in his class is an idiot for doing so.

[HairOfTheDog]

I understand how you and MS feel, sally.

I don't personally find the poem disgusting and probably wouldn't have in high school, but I don't think its content and execution are notable works of literature either. It's all subjective.

I'm interested to know what assignment/topic Olio was instructing when the poem was read in class. I could see the poem being highly appropriate for several different topics of analysis and study, though not in a high school setting (by most people's standards). Olio's not charged with a crime or anything, so unless he chooses to make a public statement or file a civil suit, I'll probably never know.

[Donovan]

That wasn't appropriate for the classroom, and like Sally I'm unimpressed with it as a whole. There are much more provocative ways to introduce sexual expression into a poetry class. Hell, just let them read some of Shakespeare's best sonnets and them let them know there's a good chance many of them were written to a man. I am of the opinion that forcing one's overt sexuality on a captive audience is in its own way as bad as the forced oppression of sexuality. Same reason I don't care much for Mapplethorpe's photographic "piss jesus" stuff. Too obvious. T

This wasn't any sort of provocative art, it was just "Fifty Shades of Gay."

Oh come on, Someone had to say it...