[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.lish a haven of antiauthoritarian civil rights for its In addition to articles for Rolling Stone andresidents.Earlier that year, in June 1970, Thomp- other magazines, Thompson went on to publishson published  The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent eight more books (mostly anthologies of previouslyand Depraved for Scanlan s Monthly.British illus- published articles) that catalogued political corrup-trator Ralph Steadman worked with Thompson on tion and the disillusionment of the times, but none Thou Shalt Not Kill: A Memorial for Dylan Thomas 309ever again achieved the astounding cultural reso- who drank himself to death during his last or-nance of the two Fear and Loathing books.His writ- giastic poetry tour of the United States.It is alsoing remained insightful and uncompromising and much more: a prophetic poem of enraged protestgonzo as ever but failed to find the same kind of denouncing the destruction of many poets in themass audience as his masterpiece.In a 1979 preface worldwide culture of power, violence, and deathThompson wrote that he had  already lived and and tragically affirming the creative, artistic imagi-finished the life [he] had planned to live and that nation.By combining diverse poetic techniques,he may as well end it all.He may not have been forms, and traditions KENNETH REXROTH whoserious at the time, but 25 years later he certainly was not himself a Beat but strongly influenced thewas.On February 20, 2005, Thompson took his Beat movement produced this unique poem,own life with a handgun blast to the head.Uncom- which he performed with the accompaniment ofpromising in his writing, he was equally uncompro- a live jazz band.Indeed, Rexroth was a pioneer,mising in how he lived and how he ended, his life.with Kenneth Patchen (1911 72) and others, ofLike the greatest of the Beat authors, Thompson performing poetry with musical accompanimenthad the rare ability to give succinct voice to the (some commercially recorded).This ferociousunarticulated thoughts and concerns of his own poem helped to mobilize the San Francisco Poetrygeneration and of those to follow him.He was able Renaissance in which Beat poetry was born in theto crystallize in writing the spirit of an age, to show 1950s, a decade of cold war, the Korean War, theus a vision of ourselves that, while perhaps unap- black struggle against racism, and the terrifyingpealing, is nonetheless honest.Finally, he showed threat of nuclear annihilation.us how to tolerate, or even defiantly rejoice in, our The poem begins,  They are murdering all thedegenerate civilization, and he exposed lives of young men all over the world: Youth are beingwilling complicity.destroyed as ruthlessly as, for example, early Chris-tian martyrs who prophetically denounced the liesBibliography and oppression of their society:Carroll, E.Jean.Hunter: The Strange and Savage Life ofHunter S.Thompson.New York: Dutton, 1993.They are stoning Stephen.McKeen, William.Hunter S.Thompson.Boston: Twayne, He did great wonders among the people,1991.They could not stand against his wisdom.Perry, Paul.Fear and Loathing: The Strange and TerribleSaga of Hunter S.Thompson.New York: Thunder s And:Mouth, 1992.Thompson, Hunter S.The Proud Highway: Saga of a Des- You are broiling Lawrence on his gridiron,perate Southern Gentleman, 1955 1967 (The Fear When you demanded he divulgeand Loathing Letter, Volume One).Edited by Douglas The hidden treasures of the spirit,Brinkley.New York: Ballantine Books, 1998.He showed you the poor.Whitmer, Peter O.When the Going Gets Weird: TheTwisted Life and Times of Hunter S.Thompson.New And:York: Hyperion, 1993.You are shooting Sebastian with arrows.Luther Riedel He kept the faithful steadfast under persecution.Who is guilty of murdering men of prophetic vi- Thou Shalt Not Kill: A Memorial for sion? Rexroth accuses the reader or listener of partici-Dylan Thomas Kenneth Rexroth (1955) pating in the  social lie of coercion and destruction: Thou Shalt Not Kill, written in 1953 54, is along, elegiac poem mourning the death of the You!charismatic Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1917 53), The hyena with polished face and bow tie.310 Ticket That Exploded, TheThe vulture dripping with carrion, sanity.In this intense, far-reaching, and complexCarefully and carelessly robed in imported poem, did Rexroth explode from his own successtweeds.in the deadly culture that he attacked? AestheticThe jackal in double breasted gabardine.and ethical controversies concerning this impor-tant poem, which explored in such critical studiesIn corporations, in the United Nations,: as those listed below, have crucial implications forBeat poetry in general.The Superego in a thousand uniforms;You, the finger man of behemoth, BibliographyThe murderer of the young men.Gibson, Morgan.Kenneth Rexroth.New York.TwaynePublishers, 1972.Behemoth, the monstrous demon of the Bible   .Revolutionary Rexroth: Poet of East-West Wis-and John Milton s Paradise Lost, is an influential dom.Hamden Conn.: The Shoe String Press, 1985.precurser of Moloch in Allen Ginsberg s  HOWL, The Expanded Internet Edition (2000) containingwhich seems influenced by Rexroth s poem in Rexroth s Letters to Gibson (1957 79) is availableterms of subject, themes, prophetic rhetoric, and on Karl Young s Light & Dust site at http://www.righteous passion.Rexroth even writes in Part III of thing.net/~grist/ld/rexroth/gibson.htm.this poem:  Three generations of infants / Stuffed Hamalian, Linda.A Life of Kenneth Rexroth.New York:down the maw of Moloch. W.W.Norton, 1991 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]