Rebel Teachers

By David Gibson -

Following from my last post, I want to mention and possibly discuss a book I read on the Beats in the last year. BEATS AT NAROPA: AN ATHOLOGY, edited by Anne Waldman and Laura Wright (Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, 2009) brings us to an interesting aspect of what the Beats became after they had been around for 20 or so years. All of the collected wisdom of their wanderings, and writings, and communal sharing of ideas, became the material for an alternative mode of education similar to that of Black Mountain College but founded on Eastern principles. In 1974, with the aid of poets Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman, it incorporated The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, which
consists of the Summer Writing Program and the Department of Writing and Poetics, which administers the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Writing and Poetics, the MFA in Creative Writing (low residency program), and the BA in Writing and Literature. The Kerouac School has as its mission the education of students as knowledgeable practitioners of the literary arts. Its objectives toward that mission include encouraging a disciplined practice of writing and cultivating a historical and cultural awareness of literary studies. The view that one can continuously open to "big mind" for freshness and inspiration informs the school's approach to creative writing as a contemplative practice. In this spirit, university founder Chögyam Trungpa's notion of "art in everyday life" is fundamental to its pedagogy and aesthetic, combining both Eastern and Western wisdom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kerouac_School_of_Disembodied_Poetics

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