Busan Journal, Day 7

Total Animal Soup of Time

What was I thinking?

It seemed like a good idea months ago when I was putting together my "literature of rebellion" reading list.

I chose to begin my teaching stint at PNU with HOWL. It is, after all, thought to be the single most explosive literary work in the decades following WWII. It's the poem that created all the early excitement. Clearly, too, it embodies the cultural anger,anxiety, and antipathy that preoccupied American writers, artists, and musicians in those years.

Now that I am in Korea, thinking in concrete terms of the kids who will be sitting in front of me, anticipating real faces on real students, who will have serious questions about words and references -- for whom I will have to provide justification as well as explanation -- well, YIKERS! It's different somehow.

I mean, really, what kind of person would write a poem like this?

Maybe more to the point, what kind of person would assign a poem like this as required reading, especially as a visiting professor in a foreign university?

I was pondering these questions and berating myself as I read through HOWL again in preparation for my first class -- which begins in 90 minutes!

There are certainly less reputable poems around, but few that I know of that can offend as many categories of propriety as Howl. How am I going to do this?

On the other hand, how could I possibly avoid it, given the topic I set out for myself? To avoid Howl in a context like this would be roughly like explaining hurricane damage in New Orleans without talking about Katrina. Or something like that.

The key will be providing sufficient context, information as to time, place, circumstance, and reference. I don't imagine I will need to do much with what we used to call "four letter words." Anyone who has seen American movies on TV over here will have heard all of those before.

Still, explaining context is a complicated business. It is even complicated in America where students know less about their own recent history than they should.

The rational side of my brain says, "Relax, you know how to do this."

The other side of me brain is still shouting, "YIKERS!"