O Uivo de Ginsberg: a linguagem em julgamento

RESUMO Neste artigo, tomo o julgamento da obra Howl [Uivo], de Allen Ginsberg, ocorrido em 1957, nos EUA, como ponto de partida para discussões sobre linguagem, levantadas durante o processo. No decorrer do julgamento, questões que concernem desde a organização e funcionamento da linguagem poética até ao que pode ser dito ou não de acordo com as imposições de uma sociedade foram colocadas em questão. Busco, neste texto, portanto, discutir algumas dessas questões suscitadas por tal debate à luz de reflexões e apontamentos propostos pelo linguista Émile Benveniste e leitores de sua obra, tais como Gérard Dessons e Henri Meschonnic.

The Post-Structuralist Repositioning of Allen Ginsberg’s Controversial Poem “Howl”: A Deconstructive Approach

Allen Ginsberg’s poems with their paradoxical language and syntax are a literary commentary on anger, hopelessness and frustration of the American society in the 1950s. His poems work on the binary concept of this culture versus counter-culture and try to portray a suitable diatribe on the cultural issues which were disgusting in Ginsberg’s mind. The present study looks for potentially malfunctioning sections of the language of his masterpiece “Howl” in order to argue that although attempted by the poet, there might be no organic unified without showing susceptibility to breakage and rupture. The study concludes that Ginsberg’s poetry strives hard to express a vehement lamentation in breath-length stanzas which often times decenters its own text and might raise multiple interpretations and provoke multiple lingual disorganizations. KEYWORDS: Allen Ginsberg, Deconstruction, Jacques Derrida, poem, binary opposition, rupture, analysis

Beat Performance Poetry

The essay investigates the influence of Beat performance poetry on the contemporary slam poetry movement, which includes many participants who openly acknowledge Beat antecedents for the social justice content of their poetry. The essay focuses on the Beat performance poetry of Allen Ginsberg, Bob Kaufman, and Anne Waldman, and discusses at length the ways in which the author teaches Beat literature as well as performance poetry.

Introduction

As one studies Crumb from the outset of his career to the present, it becomes evident that he has embarked on a massive autobiographical enterprise in which personal, secret “confessions”—in a mode reminiscent of figures as diverse as Saint Augustine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henry Miller, and Allen Ginsberg—are made public and merge with the topics to which he is drawn in literature. This Introduction explores Crumb’s traumatic childhood and his early decision to become an artist, the influence of his two brothers on his early intellectual development as well as his rejection of organized religion. The focus then turns to a discussion of Crumb’s role as the genius of the “comix revolution” which was launched during Crumb’s time in San Francisco when Zap magazine was created. The chapter closes with a brief summary of the contents of each chapter. R. Crumb: Literature, Autobiography, and the Quest for Self aims to fill a major gap in contemporary scholarship in the humanities.

Música, ritmo y literatura. Recreaciones de autor en Lorca y Ginsberg

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo realizar un análisis comparativo entre la literatura de carácter oral y la música en torno a las obras Romancero gitano (1928) de Federico García Lorca y Howl (1958) de Allen Ginsberg. A pesar de su alejamiento temporal y geográfico, el estudio de las obras demuestra que las estructuras de ambos autores se nutren de la cultura popular que les rodea para convertirla en motivo literario de su obra. Finalmente, este análisis ha evidenciado la influencia de la música en estos autores -ya fuera de carácter popular como el romancero o el flamenco en Andalucía o el jazz y el bebop experimental en Nueva York-.

Light this city: Allen Ginsberg, street art and urban intervention

This article argues that Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and unauthorized street artists perform a common function in regard to urban intervention. In the first place, they respond to a shared historical context, namely the ruthless shaping of the American urban landscape to obey the logic of capitalism. They also use similar artistic methods to critique this violent process, as I show through a comparative analysis of Ginsberg’s Moloch and the Obey figure designed by street artist Shepard Fairey. In both cases, a monstrous figure is placed within the city to show the urban landscape for what it really is. At the same time, the work of poets such as Ginsberg and various street artists suggests that the city can be redeemed from its fallen state, by representing it as a space where a vast number of potentially liberating behaviours are possible. Furthermore, I will argue that the common function performed by Ginsberg and unauthorized street artists can help explain the mutual reverence that exists between them.

Creative Environments: The Geo-Poetics of Allen Ginsberg

As was the case for other writers from the Beat Generation, geography is more than simply a setting for Allen Ginsberg’s work, as his poetry also bears the imprint of the influence of the landscapes through which he traveled in his mind and poetic practice. In the 1950s, the same decade which saw the composition of Ginsberg’s Howl, Guy Debord and his followers developed the concept of “psychogeography” and “dérive” to analyze the influence of landscapes on one’s mind. The Debordian concept of psychogeography implies then that an objective world can have unknown and subjective consequences. Inspired by Debord’s theories and through the analysis of key poems, this paper argues that a psychogeographical focus can shed new light on ecocritical studies of Ginsberg’s poetry. It can indeed unveil the complex construction of the poet’s own space-time poetics, from hauntological aspects to his specific composition process.

“The literary debuts of the Romanian 80’s generation”

Individual identity crisis became an obsessive theme of the Central-European literature, lived intensively in this space. From this point of view, the generations and literary promotions of the 1960 and 1970’s Romania benefited from a specific openness due to a complex of social, political and historical factors. The 80s generation appeared in a full process of strengthening the ideological vigilance after the famous July Theses introduced by Nicolae Ceausescu following the North Korean model. Although there were the same rules and the same barriers for beginners of the era, the issue was treated and felt differently. While some suffer from the delay of the debut, others are patient because they trust their chance, others give up. Even if the overall context was an oppressive one and the institution of censorship was the one that controlled the literature during the communist period, authors managed to adapt and write no matter what, they found accepted ways that did not alter their message and they published under conditions that today we can hardly call without doubt honourable. The published authors had visibility and were united around some literary circles, forming what Allen Ginsberg called in The Best Minds of My Generation: A Literary History of the Beats, «circles of liberation.»