Allen Ginsberg

艾倫·金斯堡，美國詩人，“垮掉派”的代表人物。他生于新澤西州帕特遜市一個俄國移民家庭，是猶太人。 其父在中學教英文，是個默默無聞的小詩人；其母是位思想激進的共產(chǎn)主義者，對金斯堡的政治傾向影響很大。1943年，金斯堡從帕特森的中學畢業(yè)，進入紐約哥倫比亞大學攻讀經(jīng)濟學專業(yè)。在中學時代，就認識了詩人威廉·卡勒斯·威廉斯，受到他在詩歌方面的指點。大學時結(jié)識了威廉·巴若斯和杰克·凱魯亞克，與他們一起過著放蕩不羈的生活。堪稱美國當代詩壇和整個文學運動中的一位“怪杰”。 1948年，金斯堡從哥倫比亞大學畢業(yè)，獲文學學士學位。1953年，經(jīng)威廉斯介紹來到舊金山投奔大名鼎鼎的雷克斯羅思，落腳在費爾林蓋蒂的“城市之光”書店附近，做了一段時間的市場調(diào)研員，次年秋開始創(chuàng)作《嚎叫》。1955年10月，金斯堡在6號美術(shù)舉行的朗誦會上朗誦了《嚎叫》的第一部分，在聽眾中引起強烈反響。1956年，《嚎叫》全詩 由“城市之光”書店出版，第一版是在英國印行的；次年，美國海關(guān)干涉該詩的第二次印刷，經(jīng)過曠日持久的審理，法庭宣布海關(guān)敗訴，認為《嚎叫》不無“社會意義”，這使得金斯堡聲名大振，"垮掉派"詩人們也因而成為公眾關(guān)注的焦點。
作為一首詩和一部文獻，《嚎叫》可以同艾略特的《荒原》相提并論，它成為阿倫·金斯堡和他的同時代人的里程碑。
阿倫·金斯堡從此被奉為“垮掉的一代”之父，他集詩人、文學運動領(lǐng)袖、激進的無政府主義者、旅行家、預(yù)言家和宗教徒于一身。
他叫嚷：“別把狂風藏起來。”這幾乎成為他在美學上的宣言。
他自稱在形式和精神上師承惠特曼，神秘氣氛上得之于布萊克。
他以學習惠特曼的個性解放精神和自由詩體自命，在反映戰(zhàn)后美國部分青年的情緒和擺脫40年代以來學院詩歌的桎梏方面起了一定的作用。
金斯堡的長詩行洋洋灑灑，其中既可見惠特曼的遺風，又可見凱魯亞克散文風格的影響，因而顯得充滿活力和新鮮感?！犊ǖ衔骷捌渌?958一60年的詩》(1961)和《行星消息》（1968）等詩集中的詩都是這種詩體的佳作。金斯堡的其他詩集還有：《現(xiàn)實三明治》（1963）、《亞美利加的衰落》（1973）、《白色裹尸布》（1986）等。
他那些發(fā)泄痛苦與狂歡的詩作，不僅給詩壇以巨大沖擊，有時也令整個社會為之瞠目。
富有意味的是，在阿倫·金斯堡1973年成為美國文學藝術(shù)院成員，繼之又得到了全國圖書獎。美國學院終于迎進了這位粗魯狂野、留著大胡子的反學院派詩人。
1997年4月5日，這位美國著名詩人、“垮掉的一代”的代表人物阿倫·金斯堡因患癌癥在紐約辭世，終年70歲。
金斯堡的詩歌創(chuàng)作活動一直持續(xù)到90年代，其大部分詩作都是在吸毒后寫出的，但后期的詩都未能超過《嚎叫》。
by Steve Huey
The greatest poet of the Beat movement and one of the most renowned American writers of the 20th century, Allen Ginsberg transcended literary and intellectual barriers to exert a profound influence on the culture at large. His accomplishments are too numerous and his oeuvre too large for a music reference resource to do them justice; many other sources exist that offer more complete perspectives on his life and work. Ginsberg made sporadic recordings of his work, both formal and otherwise, starting in his heyday of the late '50s and continuing into the '90s. Most of them were poetry readings, naturally, but Ginsberg also experimented with songs, often accompanying his singing on the harmonium.Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born June 3, 1926, in Newark, NJ, and grew up in nearby Paterson. His father Louis was a published poet, a teacher, and politically a socialist; his mother Naomi was a Communist radical, but unfortunately her bouts with mental illness (mostly severe paranoia) consumed much of Ginsberg's childhood. He began writing in a journal at age 11, around the same time as his mother's suicide attempt, and discovered his major poetic influence Walt Whitman in high school. He enrolled at Columbia University in 1943, originally planning to become a labor lawyer, but soon fell in with a literary crowd that included Jack Kerouac (a fellow student), Neal Cassady, and William S. Burroughs. Ginsberg began writing seriously around 1945, and around the same time he began to experiment with drugs, and had some of his first homosexual experiences. He graduated from Columbia in 1948 and began traveling, visiting Burroughs in Texas; there he was arrested as a reluctant accomplice in his roommates' burglary ring, and voluntarily committed himself to Columbia's mental hospital. He attempted to renounce homosexuality and took a job as a market researcher upon his release, but hearing the poet William Carlos Williams at a reading drew him back into literature, and he gave up trying to fit into mainstream society.Ginsberg moved to San Francisco in 1954, and that year met artist's model Peter Orlovsky, who became his lover; their relationship, though nonmonogamous and marked by periods of separation, would prove to be lifelong. Though he'd written quite a bit of poetry by this point, very little of it had been published, and he was better known as an advocate of fellow Beat writers like Kerouac and Burroughs. That all changed in October 1955, when Ginsberg read parts of his new epic poem "Howl" at the Six Gallery. An impassioned, defiant critique of American culture that served as something of a Beat manifesto, it was an immediate sensation. The local City Lights bookstore, which had just started its own publishing arm, released Ginsberg's first book, the seminal Howl and Other Poems, in 1956. The following year, City Lights owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti was arrested on obscenity charges for selling copies of the book; authorities objected mostly to its homosexual content. A judge ruled that the book was not obscene, and the attendant publicity helped make Ginsberg a household name. He recorded his first album of poetry readings, also titled Howl and Other Poems, for the Fantasy label in 1959.Over the next decade, Ginsberg became a leading countercultural figure. He spoke out in favor of the First Amendment and against the Vietnam War; he was turned on to LSD by Timothy Leary and to Buddhism by Kerouac; he traveled a bit with Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters; he traveled all over the world in search of intellectual and spiritual enlightenment; he appeared in the background of Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" music video; he took part in the famed antiwar demonstrations in 1968 that resulted in the arrest of the so-called Chicago Seven; he was, unsurprisingly, the subject of a massive FBI dossier. Of course, he also continued to write prolifically. In 1961, he published another lengthy signature poem, "Kaddish," which explored his relationship with his mother (she'd passed away in an institution in 1956). Five years later, Atlantic Records issued a recording of the work titled Allen Ginsberg Reads Kaddish: A 20th Century American Ecstatic Narrative Poem. Ginsberg's next album was William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, which set the works of one of his favorite poets to jazzy musical backing; it was issued by Verve in 1970.As time passed and his lasting impact became clearer, Ginsberg was increasingly accepted by the literary establishment, culminating in his winning a National Book Award for The Fall of America: Poems of These States in 1974. He recorded with John Lennon and Leonard Cohen, and undertook several song-oriented sessions of his own during the course of the '70s, including a collaboration with Bob Dylan. The best results of these efforts were finally released in 1983 as First Blues: 1971-1981 on former Columbia executive John Hammond's own label. Additionally, Ginsberg performed the song-poem "Capitol Air" in concert with punk rockers the Clash, and appeared on the track "Ghetto Defendant" on their hit Combat Rock album. He abandoned singing on his next album, 1989's The Lion for Real, a set of spoken word pieces with musical backing. That same year, he teamed up with composer Philip Glass to transform the antiwar poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra" into a musical theater piece; the collaboration worked well enough that they reteamed for a full album, 1993's Hydrogen Jukebox. In 1994, Rhino Records issued an exhaustive four-CD box set of Ginsberg recordings titled Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Poems and Songs 1949-1993. Sadly, Ginsberg contracted liver cancer as a complication of hepatitis, and passed away at his New York City loft on April 5, 1997. Fantasy reissued Howl and Other Poems on CD the following year, and in 2002 the Locust label assembled the compilation New York Blues: Rags, Ballads and Harmonium Songs.