Teacher On Leave After Reciting Seriously Explicit Sex Poem To High School Students

A Connecticut teacher has been placed on leave for reciting Allen Ginsberg’s “Yes Master” to his high school AP English class. Parents are not happy. I rolled my eyes as soon as I started reading this story, but I was admittedly not familiar with the poem. After reading it — yes, I get their discomfort. It’s beyond strange that a high school teacher made the decision to read this aloud to his class.

Some parents talked to the local news station, WTNH:

“I don’t understand how that actually got into a high school class,” said one parent who wanted to remain anonymous. “I can understand parents being really upset about it.”

“My son is not in that class. If he was, I think I would be mortified,” the parent said. “It was extremely inappropriate.”

I’m usually in the camp of, “everyone relax, high school students know about sex.” But frankly, it was the reading aloud of the poem that got me. Making a decision like that as a teacher really makes me question your common sense. Imagine reading these lines in front of a class of high school students:

please master can I wrap my arms around your white ass

please master can I lick your groin gurled with blond soft fur
please master can I touch my tongue to your rosy asshole
please master may I pass my face to your balls…

Well, okay then. And those were some of the tamest lines I could find. You can read the whole poem here.

Would I have a problem with my senior student deciding to read that poem? No. I don’t have a problem with erotica. I do have a problem with Allen Ginsberg’s involvement in NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association), an organization that seeks to abolish age of consent laws. I do have a problem with a teacher making a decision for all of those students and reciting something that probably made a lot of them very uncomfortable. Was he using the Ginsberg poem to make a point about sexual repression or a point about consent? It was an odd choice.

(photo: Getty Images)