Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 21, 1991 TAG: 9102210032
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BETH MACY/ STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Something kind of strange.
Two weeks ago, Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson drew a record crowd at button-down Washington & Lee.
And now this week, the ultimate beatnik is guest lecturing at Virginia Military Institute.
Why Allen Ginsberg? Why VMI?
"Why not?" said VMI English professor Gordon Ball, defensive at the suggestion that Ginsberg and VMI seem, well, incongruous.
"Education isn't a matter of what you're accustomed to being constantly reaffirmed," said Ball, a longtime friend of the 64-year-old poet. "Education is a matter of challenge of thought, and VMI is an educational institution."
Indeed, the inimitable Ginsberg, dressed in restrained dark suits with his beard neatly trimmed, held nothing back in addressing the cadets this week.
During a Monday English class, he discussed his landmark "Howl" with students who'd spent the previous two weeks studying it, and he drew parallels between the 1955 epic poem and today's war in the Middle East.
"If anything, the poem has just gotten more true over time," he said of Right now, we're in the midst of a vast war to preserve our right to get more fossil fuels - pollution that will damage our planet quite seriously. Allen Ginsberg "Howl," which, through its graphic sexual references and criticisms of mainstream society, challenged literary and social conventions when it was published in 1956.
"Right now, we're in the midst of a vast war to preserve our right to get more fossil fuels - pollution that will damage our planet quite seriously," Ginsberg told the classroom of cadets.
Repeatedly criticizing conservative, conformist America throughout his weeklong stay at VMI, Ginsberg lashed out at North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms' recent censorship efforts, "the irrational rationalization" of the war in the gulf, and the hypocrisy of a country that proclaims a war on drugs without outlawing cigarettes, "the most lethal drug of them all."
The cadets' response?
They asked thoughtful questions in class and sang along with Ginsberg while he performed his musical interpretations of William Blake's poems.
Heck, they even gave Ginsberg a standing ovation after his Tuesday night poetry reading in the staid VMI chapel, a lively event that contrasted the uniformed cadets and the Rockbridge County bohemians.
For Ginsberg, who freely discussed his experience with drugs, Zen Buddhism and homosexuality, it was a week marked in contrasts.
Asked if he had ever visited a military college before, he smiled and said: "As a student at Columbia, I once went to West Point for a debate, proposing that the government should dissolve the Army and Navy. . . . I lost."
Over a mess-hall lunch of chicken cacciatore and rice, the poet and the cadets compared notes on discipline - the cadets explaining the military's concept of room confinement as punishment, and Ginsberg explaining the tribulations of eight-hour meditation sessions in a Buddhist seminary.
And at one point during his crash course in military life, he jokingly wondered, "Do they have a chair of bacterial warfare here? They must have."
Explaining why the cadets responded so positively to Ginsberg, English professor Alan Baragona said the college's rigid structure tends to foster a rebellious streak among some cadets.
"Last year they were passing Charles Bukowski's books around in the barracks," Baragona said. "And a lot of them took the course last semester on poets of the beat generation."
But there have been misgivings among some cadets, primarily younger students who aren't familiar with Ginsberg's work, Baragona added. "Some of them know he's gay and it's just a knee-jerk reaction against that lifestyle."
Matt Williams, a sophomore who writes for VMI's student newspaper, said the barracks have been abuzz with talk of the visit. "We're just from a different generation," Williams 20, said. "We grew up in the conservative Reagan years.
"As for me, I think having a totally radical point of view like this helps build upon my education; I think it's refreshing VMI has opened up to it."
And as for Ginsberg, one of the few remaining artists of the beat generation who still writes and speaks prolifically with no holds barred, he acknowledges that wars have historically been good for poetry.
Asked if he plans to become a vocal opponent of the war in the gulf as he did during Vietnam, Ginsberg said he doesn't plan to do anything; he simply does what he feels.
"I didn't plan to speak out on Vietnam, and I haven't planned to speak out now, but it's already happening," he said, recalling an anti-war demonstration he participated in recently.
"My job is just to manifest what's going through my mind . . . The poet tries to make some sense of things and point to areas of incongruity.
"The poet celebrates the poignancy of young kids dying for old men's wars."
Ginsberg will present an lecture, "Poetry, Meditation and Aggression," tonight at 7:30 in Lejeune Hall.
And through April 18, an exhibition of Ginsberg's photographs that span the beat movement will be on display at the VMI Museum. Call 464-7207 for more information.
by CNB