The NY Times article I read says this:
>>One thing Naone and Merwin shared was an interest in Buddhism. Early
in their relationship, they were invited to the Naropa Institute in
Boulder, Colo., a center for Buddhist studies where Allen Ginsberg was
teaching. Naropa was presided over by a Tibetan guru, Chogyam Trungpa, a
tireless drunk and womanizer. At a Halloween party while Ginsberg was
away, Trungpa ordered everyone to undress. Merwin and Naone refused.
Trungpa's bodyguards tried to batter down the door to their room. "I was
not going to go peacefully," Merwin recalls. "I started hitting people
with beer bottles. It was a very violent scene." Trungpa's bodyguards
stripped them, and the two figures cowered together before the guru like
a chastened Adam and Eve.The incident came to be mythologized as "The
Great Naropa Poetry Wars." Naropa became an epitaph for an era, a
paradigm of the difference between two kinds of poetry -- between
Ginsberg's passionate, declamatory style and Merwin's restrained,
Western formalism. Despite what happened at Naropa, Merwin is still a
Buddhist. <<
The following link is fairly detailed -
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stgsamplechapters/trungpa.asp .<>
Apparently Ginsberg later, though not present (as all seem to agree),
affirmed the guru-rightness of Trungpa's actions. Both Tom Clark and Ed
Sanders have apparently published reports on this bit of 60s (?at least
in spirit) Boys Behaving Badly - and apparently there is correspondence
between Ginsberg & Merwin on the subject. But who shall scape whipping
when that Great Scorer comes to mark against his/her name? While Waiting
for the End quite a few of the Boys - and a Girl or two - behaved very
Badly during the last century. And who doesn't like to dish the dirt
with the rest of the girls?
Martin
Ken Wolman wrote:
>
> I don't have the book here, either; it's at home. Somehow or other,
> Merwin and his female companion at the time were at Naropa for some
> instructional purpose. Ginsberg was not the only Trungpa acolyte who
> was hanging around, but he was the most noticeable. I believe Trungpa
> ORDERED Merwin to appear at some soiree, the evening dancing bear, but
> Merwin was tired and therefore declined. So he and his companion were
> seized, dragged by force to the main hall, and stripped naked.
> Ginsberg may not have laid hands on Merwin but he was vocal in his
> support of the great guru and was ordering Merwin to comply. Okay,
> drop the Abu Ghraib thing: try O'Brien in 1984. Ginsberg was never my
> idol, not nearly, but before I read about this atrocious episode I'd
> come to like some of his poetry. Now I will not read it. A principle
> that won't do a damn thing to Ginsberg but makes me feel a bit better:
> and I don't sense that I'm cutting myself out of anything immortal. As
> for Merwin, his writing (apart from the translations) leaves me
> unmoved, but the treatment he received at the hands of that lushed-up
> Tibetan ersatz monk makes him instantly and permanently sympathetic.
>
> Clarify, please--did Weinberger himself ever teach at or study at Naropa?
>
> Ken
>
--
M.J.Walker - no webpage, no blogspot, no idea -
nobody dies, 'nothing happens', we call it music,
it is time rushing past the shabby portals of our ear
and I am just a terrible mistake.
Robert Kelly
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