Allen Ginsberg

艾伦·金斯堡，美国诗人，“垮掉派”的代表人物。他生于新泽西州帕特逊市一个俄国移民家庭，是犹太人。 其父在中学教英文，是个默默无闻的小诗人；其母是位思想激进的共产主义者，对金斯堡的政治倾向影响很大。1943年，金斯堡从帕特森的中学毕业，进入纽约哥伦比亚大学攻读经济学专业。在中学时代，就认识了诗人威廉·卡勒斯·威廉斯，受到他在诗歌方面的指点。大学时结识了威廉·巴若斯和杰克·凯鲁亚克，与他们一起过着放荡不羁的生活。堪称美国当代诗坛和整个文学运动中的一位“怪杰”。 1948年，金斯堡从哥伦比亚大学毕业，获文学学士学位。1953年，经威廉斯介绍来到旧金山投奔大名鼎鼎的雷克斯罗思，落脚在费尔林盖蒂的“城市之光”书店附近，做了一段时间的市场调研员，次年秋开始创作《嚎叫》。1955年10月，金斯堡在6号美术举行的朗诵会上朗诵了《嚎叫》的第一部分，在听众中引起强烈反响。1956年，《嚎叫》全诗 由“城市之光”书店出版，第一版是在英国印行的；次年，美国海关干涉该诗的第二次印刷，经过旷日持久的审理，法庭宣布海关败诉，认为《嚎叫》不无“社会意义”，这使得金斯堡声名大振，"垮掉派"诗人们也因而成为公众关注的焦点。
作为一首诗和一部文献，《嚎叫》可以同艾略特的《荒原》相提并论，它成为阿伦·金斯堡和他的同时代人的里程碑。
阿伦·金斯堡从此被奉为“垮掉的一代”之父，他集诗人、文学运动领袖、激进的无政府主义者、旅行家、预言家和宗教徒于一身。
他叫嚷：“别把狂风藏起来。”这几乎成为他在美学上的宣言。
他自称在形式和精神上师承惠特曼，神秘气氛上得之于布莱克。
他以学习惠特曼的个性解放精神和自由诗体自命，在反映战后美国部分青年的情绪和摆脱40年代以来学院诗歌的桎梏方面起了一定的作用。
金斯堡的长诗行洋洋洒洒，其中既可见惠特曼的遗风，又可见凯鲁亚克散文风格的影响，因而显得充满活力和新鲜感。《卡迪西及其他：1958一60年的诗》(1961)和《行星消息》（1968）等诗集中的诗都是这种诗体的佳作。金斯堡的其他诗集还有：《现实三明治》（1963）、《亚美利加的衰落》（1973）、《白色裹尸布》（1986）等。
他那些发泄痛苦与狂欢的诗作，不仅给诗坛以巨大冲击，有时也令整个社会为之瞠目。
富有意味的是，在阿伦·金斯堡1973年成为美国文学艺术院成员，继之又得到了全国图书奖。美国学院终于迎进了这位粗鲁狂野、留着大胡子的反学院派诗人。
1997年4月5日，这位美国著名诗人、“垮掉的一代”的代表人物阿伦·金斯堡因患癌症在纽约辞世，终年70岁。
金斯堡的诗歌创作活动一直持续到90年代，其大部分诗作都是在吸毒后写出的，但后期的诗都未能超过《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.