Year

2012

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Publication

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Mentioned People (1)

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Chronology Entries (2)

#	Year	Text	Linked Data
1	1955-1985	Allen Ginsberg and China : general Allen Ginsberg turned to the Eastern world under the influence of Ezra Pound, Kenneth Rexroth and Gary Snyder. He found his spiritual home in Buddhism, in Chinese Ch'an and Chinese poetics. He is not only familiar with the translated Chinese poems by them, but also experienced the Chinese culture in person. He has read the classics of Chinese Buddhism and the works of Confucius, Laozi, Zhuangzi. In addition to the poems of Li Bo, Du Fu, Su Shi, Wang Wei and Bai Juyi, he has read the works of modern Chinese poets such as Guo Moruo, Ai Qing, Shu Ting and Bei Dao. Ginsberg had also learned some Chinese verse skills such as image juxtaposition and employed them in his own poems. He said he 'tried to keep the language sufficiently dense in one way or another – use of primitive naïve grammar, elimination of prosey articles & syntactical sawdust, juxtaposition of cubist style images, or hot rhythm'. Of various means, perhaps the most imposrtant, aside from rhythm, is 'the image juxtaposition'. When he visited China in 1984, he enjoyed reading the poems of Bai Juyi because he found they had common sentiment in Ch'an Buddhism. Many of Ginsberg's poems in the late period take as their subject Buddhist Meditation and ideas. Allen Ginsberg, as well as other poets and writers of the Beat Generation, have found their last home for their anchorless heart in the classical Chinese poems and the Chinese thoughts and philosophy. And through their poems the essence of Chinese culture is also accepted and anderstood by many other Western people and influences their thoughts and life as well.	Person: Ginsberg, Allen
2	1984.10.16-12.9	Gary Snyder travels in the Peoples' Republic of China as part of an American Academy of Arts & Letters delegation for a 4-day writers conference, as guest of the Writers' Union with Toni Morrison, Allen Ginsberg, Harrison Salisbury, William Gass, Francine du Plessix Gray. The American writers were taken to the most famous tourist destinations : Beijing, the Chinese Acrobat Theatre, the Imperial Palace, a section of the Great Wall. After a week in Beijing, the group went to Xian, to Shanghai, to see the Buddhist temples, the Tang gardens in Suzhou and Han Shan's Cold Mountain. After the other members of the mission went back to America, Allen Ginsberg stayed in China by himself for some time to have more communication with contemporary Chinese writers and a spiritual dialogue with great ancient Chinese poets. He wen to the universities in Beijing, Shanghai, Baoding and Guiling to read and instruct his own poems and other western poets. In this period he wrote more than ten poems : One morning I took a walk in China, Reading Bai Juyi, Improvisation in Beijing, I love old Whitman so, Black shroud. In these poems Ginsberg depicts his endearment of China and its profound culture. And the poems have been praised as opening a window for western readers to understand China.	Document: Snyder, Gary. The art of poetry No. 74. Interviewed by Eliot Weinberger. In : The Paris review ; no. 141 (Winter 1996). http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1323/the-art-of-poetry-no-74-gary-snyder. (Sny3, Publication) Document: Snyder, Gary. The Gary Snyder reader : prose, poetry, and translations, 1952-1998. (Washington, D.C. : Counterpoint, 1999). (Sny6, Publication) Document: Sherlock, John. Gary Snyder : a bibliography of works by and about Gary Snyder ; based in part on the Gary Snyder papers and other holdings of the University of California, Davis. 2nd ed., rev. and expanded. (David : University of California, Special Collections Department, 2010). http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/dept/specol/researchprojects/files/bib-garysnyder-2ed.pdf. (Sny1, Web) Person: Gass, William Howard Person: Ginsberg, Allen Person: Morrison, Toni Person: Plessix Gray, Francine du Person: Salisbury, Harrison E. Person: Snyder, Gary