"Celestial Homework" . . . an artifact from the Beat Generation . . .

[OneBlueSky]

Specialized Reading List for "Literary History of the Beat Generation," a course taught by Allen Ginsberg at Naropa Institute during the summer of 1977 . . .

http://levity.com/digaland/celestial/

In 1974, the poets Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman launched the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute (now Naropa University) in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Boulder, Colorado. Founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the school was modeled after Buddhist learning centers like Nalanda University that flourished in India between the 5th and 11th centuries described by Waldman and Andrew Schelling as "part monastery, part college, part convention hall or alchemist's lab."

In 1974, the poets Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman launched the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute (now Naropa University) in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Boulder, Colorado. Founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the school was modeled after Buddhist learning centers like Nalanda University that flourished in India between the 5th and 11th centuries described by Waldman and Andrew Schelling as "part monastery, part college, part convention hall or alchemist's lab."

The mission of Naropa has been to bring together instruction in the arts, psychology, religious studies and other fields with the Buddhist practice of wakefulness in daily life. It's still thriving.

The Jack Kerouac School gives young writers a chance to not only learn the craft from practicing poets, but to intimately observe how they live, and how their minds and senses engage the world. Over the years, the faculty has included the late William Burroughs and Gregory Corso, Diane DiPrima, Amiri Baraka, Alice Notley, Ed Sanders, Robin Blaser, and many other writers of note. Ginsberg taught there for over two decades until his death in 1997.

This "celestial homework" is the reading list that Ginsberg handed out on the first day of his course as "suggestions for a quick check-out & taste of antient scriveners whose works were reflected in Beat literary style as well as specific beat pages to dig into."