Image by Michiel Hendryckx.

Although the bound­aries of what should pass for free speech in high school Eng­lish class­rooms will be for­ev­er in debate, most every­one would agree some bound­aries must exist. But what of the speech of famous authors? Of tow­er­ing fig­ures of 20th cen­tu­ry poet­ry? Should their speech be sub­ject to review? What of an Eng­lish teacher who allows the most risqué Beat poem you’ve ever heard to be read aloud in class by the poet him­self, Allen Gins­berg, via an online video (per­haps this one)? Award-win­ning Eng­lish teacher David Olio, a beloved 19-year vet­er­an, did just that when a stu­dent asked to share Ginsberg’s ecsta­t­ic, and very explic­it, poem “Please Mas­ter” with the class.

After com­plaints from sev­er­al stu­dents, the school admin­is­tra­tion sus­pend­ed Olio, then forced him to resign. Whether or not this deci­sion was just is a debate that extends beyond the scope of this post. The vari­ables are many, as Slate’s sym­pa­thet­ic Mark Joseph Stern admits, includ­ing the fact that Olio did not exact­ly pre­pare his stu­dents for what was to come, nor give them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to opt out. The high school seniors—on the thresh­old of adult­hood and some already with one foot in college—may not have had their “emo­tion­al health” endan­gered, as Olio’s ter­mi­na­tion let­ter alleged, but it’s lit­tle won­der some of them found the mate­r­i­al shock­ing.

Ginsberg’s poem, which you can hear him read above, describes a “fan­ta­sized sex­u­al encounter between Gins­berg and Neal Cas­sady, the inspi­ra­tion for the Dean Mori­ar­ty char­ac­ter in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.” It is graph­ic, writes Stern, but “not obscene.” Instead—in its allu­sions to St. Teresa’s angel­ic vis­i­ta­tion in a “pro­fane descrip­tion of anal sex as a near­ly divine act”—Ginsberg’s poem is “dan­ger­ous because it jux­ta­pos­es ten­der­ness with masochism; dan­ger­ous because it rap­tur­ous­ly cel­e­brates a vision of same-sex inti­ma­cy we are only sup­posed to whis­per about.” Read the poem, lis­ten to Gins­berg read it, and judge for your­self.

Of course, this is hard­ly the first time Ginsberg’s work has caused con­tro­ver­sy. His Beat epic “Howl” (1955), with its sex­u­al­ly charged lines, irked the U.S. gov­ern­ment, who seized copies of the poem and put its pub­lish­er, poet and City Lights’ book­seller Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, on tri­al for obscen­i­ty. Well over six­ty years lat­er, Fer­linghet­ti has writ­ten in defense of David Olio. We can safe­ly assume that Gins­berg, who died in 1997, also would approve. And while we have every right to be shocked by Ginsberg’s poem, or not, and find the deci­sion to fire Olio war­rant­ed, or not, I tend to agree with Stern when he writes “if every Eng­lish teacher were that enthu­si­as­tic about his sub­ject, Amer­i­ca would be a much more lit­er­ate, edu­cat­ed and inter­est­ing place.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing “Howl” (1956)

Allen Gins­berg Reads a Poem He Wrote on LSD to William F. Buck­ley

Allen Gins­berg Talks About Com­ing Out to His Fam­i­ly & Fel­low Poets on 1978 Radio Show (NSFW)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.