Everybody’s serious but me. Ginsberg also attempts to bring in modern psychology to help acquit him of his deeds. The poem begins with the author stating his disappointment in America and introducing his poor financial and mental condition. Ginsberg accuses the country of "pushing" him and he asserts that he knows "what I'm doing" (25). Ginsberg’s sunflower suggests an America that has been tarnished and polluted by the carelessness of modern society. In this poem, ‘America’, the speaker addresses America directly. “America” is a Beat anthem. As a college student Ginsberg had studied Zen Buddhism. Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine? Putting one's shoulder to the wheel is an expression of hard work and labor. This happens, of course, to be beneath all of the "serious" people in the world, but it does not change the fact that he himself adapts and conforms to the societal norms imposed by Time magazine and the media. He then makes fun of America's paranoia over communist Russia by making ridiculous statements like "Russia wants to eat us alive" and "She wants to take our cars from out our garages" and "Her wants to grab Chicago" (80-82). I … A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg. Not affiliated with Harvard College. He has "two joints of marijuana millions of genitals / an unpublishable private literature..." (54). Ginsberg is perhaps remembering the great promise that America offered his own family as immigrant to the land. But Ginsberg's conscious then speaks up, as if another more interior voice has added its opinion to the matter. This stanza serves as a kind of confession for Ginsberg. He asks, how he is supposed to write a prayer with the country’s present state. Ginsberg uses an analogy to show the inhuman monster that is America repressing its people. He moves his conversation from an attack on a personified country to a sarcastic attack on the citizens of the actual country. It also makes fun of the people who blame every mishap on Russia. The time after the World Wars, when America faced a terrible economical surge is the time the poet discusses in the poem. He begins with a kind of acquiescence to American values. These lines beg the question of why a country with such technological advances criminalizes and punishes their insane in such inhumane ways. (…) But Ginsberg makes a surprising turn in the next few lines of the poem. He begins with trying to imitate American colloquial speech, an indicator that he's mocking the uninformed and uneducated who would blindly follow a blind patriotism. His most devastating blow to American discrimination comes in lines 85 and 86: "That no good. Allen Ginsberg's Poetry literature essays are academic essays for citation. Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey, June 3, 1926. The Supreme Court over ruled the death penalty sentences, citing unfair representation for the defendants and lack of due process. The stanza then turns into a kind of angry lament. “America”, a poem written by Allen Ginsberg in 1956 speaks of the turbulent times post Second World War, when the prospects of the country looked dismal and bleak. I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder. America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing. He accuses America of being in a "silly mood" and that this prevents him from writing a true "holy litany" of the country's faults. Ginsberg then admits that he is not even bringing up the most damning evidence: "...my prisons...(and) the millions of underprivaledged..." (57). America you don’t really want to go to war. This stanza also sees Ginsberg offer themes of warning to his country. Thank you! Allen Ginsberg [1926-1997], born in Newark, N.J., is an American poet and leading apostle of the beat generation. This is both a lament at the violence, or threat of violence, that was increasingly a part of American culture. He tells America that "Burroughs is in Tangiers," a reference to William S. Burroughs' time spent in Tangiers, Morrocco where he was in a kind of exile from the United States because of legal problems related to the transport of illegal drugs from Mexico. Him need big black / niggers. The poem returns here to a less personal point of view. Ginsberg, one of the primary figures of the counterculture of Beat Writers during the 1940s and 50s, presents America as a land in the grip of a capitalistic conglomerate which smothers the individual spiritually, artistically and economically. He expresses his despair about his financial situation and the way the country is engaged in the war. I’m addressing you. Ginsberg mocks the misdirected fear of those that fail to learn and think about the political and social state of their country. Ginsberg sets a more "serious" tone for the end by telling America upfront that "this is quite serious" (87). Allen Ginsberg’s ‘America’ deals with the turbulent times in America during the time post Second World War. The Wobblies was a nickname given to The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), an international worker's union that was a powerful political and social group during Ginsberg's childhood and that leaned strongly towards Socialist and leftist policies. Even though his ambitions took him in a different direction - that of a poet instead of a lawyer - Ginsberg admits that he cannot "give up my obsession." The Question and Answer section for Allen Ginsberg’s Poetry is a great During this period, Time was the most successful and one of the most read periodicals in America. He quotes his psychoanalyst’s opinion, who thinks he is perfectly right in thinking, to reiterate that he is aware of all that he is doing and speaking. Her thirst for literature makes her explore through the nuances of it. The poem is a statement of those times of political unrest and urges positive change by shedding the veil of national inactivity. After the therapist asked Ginsberg what would make him ultimately happy, Ginsberg tells him that writing poetry and living the life of the artist is what would make him happy. Allen Ginsberg “America” Allen Ginsberg wrote a poem called “America”.This poem is very long and typical of Ginsberg.He breaks the poem up into two stanzas with 40 lines in the first and 60 lines in the second. He asks when America will once again become the land that it once promised to be. (…) He expresses his despair about his financial situation and the way the country is engaged in the war. The final stanza is an amalgamation of rhythms and stream of consciousness writing. I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Allen Ginsberg's Poetry. "A Supermarket in California" Summary and Analysis. The poem involves many prominent themes such as the previous wars of the decade, nuclear warfare, the foreign policy in Asia, racial unrest in the US, and resistance against communism. Ginsberg relates the poem to music, saying that the key to understanding the structure of the poem is "in the jazz choruses...." Sentences often run on without punctuation and the poem skips from subject to subject with little relation to each other. Most of the arrests were not unwarranted. (…) He compares his poems to the assembling of automobiles. America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia. Help. Ginsberg shifts in the poem from talking to America like a jilted friend or lover, to discovering that much of himself is America, and finally moving towards ridiculing and taunting this personified America for its militaristic culture, its vapid media, and its paranoid politics. Please continue to help us support the fight against dementia. Line 53 is an allusion to John F. Kennedy, whose Catholic faith caused the American people to doubt his political standing prior to his election. The plea is also for other downtrodden people. He says in line 36 that "My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right." From line 47 onwards, the poet takes a fresh perspective yet continuing with seeing himself as America itself. Ginsberg says that he will "continue like Henry Ford" with his poetry, writing it not from an emotional and artistic point of view but instead with an eye towards profit. “America” was one of the first widely read literary statements of political unrest in the post-World War II United States. Ginsberg suggests here that the country is really being run by the media, who can effect the emotional outcry of citizens who can then strike fear into their elected representatives. Ginsberg tells America that he smokes "marijuana every chance I get," that he gets drunk in Chinatown, and that he has read the writings of Karl Marx. These lines make America seem like a lost lover, someone that Ginsberg once loved and saw great promise and potential in; it was a potential for salvation. Gratitude in the workplace: How gratitude can improve your well-being and relationships He also makes use of sounds, a part of the poem that can only be accurately assessed through a verbal reading. As he noted in lines from the first stanza, he feels that, in a way, this conversation is pointless, though through the act of writing it he knows there must be some validity in it. He sees how Asia is growing against America, which has no chance similar to that of China in the War. He writes that it is "you and I who are perfect" and insinuates that the longing for the "next world" is pointless. Write a note on the elizabethan sonnet tradition. In this poem, ‘America’, the speaker addresses America directly. The poem “America” is a significant part of American history since Allen Ginsberg confesses all the issues he was having with America during the late forties and fifties. Throughout his time in New York and San Francisco, Ginsberg saw several of his friends and acquaintances in the Beat movement arrested for murder. When will it become "angelic" (8), when will it see the death and destruction that it has caused, when will it understand that its own political oppression is greater than the political oppression of the "Trotskyites" (communists) that it denounces and goes to war with (11)? Line 61, describes the happy memory of a communist meeting Ginsberg attended as a child. Ginsberg then moves into eight lines of stream of consciousness writing in which he remembers a meeting of a Communist Party cell that his mother took him to when he was seven years old. In ‘America’ the poet has used rhetorical questions to express his perspective of America and to criticize the way of life prevails. A poem by Allen Ginsberg—Beat writer, Howl author, visionary, imp, hedonist, Buddhist, troublemaker, friend of Dylan, and poetic inheritor of Walt Whitman. Please support this website by adding us to your whitelist in your ad blocker. While he spent most of the last stanza of the poem abdicating himself from personal responsibility, he suddenly starts to take responsibility for the "emotional" reactions that media causes. His own conformity, his own willingness to accept the place in life and the roles of career and personhood within the American context, makes him just as much part of America as anyone else. Ginsberg is taking a social risk by admitting in the poem that he was once a communist. Ginsberg, for his whole career, was strongly in support of legalizing drugs and his warning to America in this line is that if the country continues to prosecute for such petty crimes, the country will loose their "best minds." The stanzas of the poem are also irregular and spontaneous. Copyright © 1999 - 2021 GradeSaver LLC. Influenced by his mother’s Communist affiliations, Ginsberg wanted to help workers and laborers as a lawyer. One of the most respected Beat writers and acclaimed American poets of his generation, Allen Ginsberg was born on June 3, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey and raised in nearby Paterson, the son of an English teacher and Russian expatriate. I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they’re all different sexes. The second stanza continues the back and forth argument that Ginsberg is having with the personified country. Allen Ginsberg was one of America’s greatest citizen, and hero. The first stanza has sixteen lines, the second and third consists of twelve lines, and the fourth and fifth stanzas consist of ten lines each. The first line sets an exhausted and depressed mood for the poem. Ginsberg, being coy, proclaims that "Everbody must have been a spy" (75-76), a sarcastic comment on the government's paranoia over all Socialist or Communist activity during this period. He has also personified America and urges it to bring in some positive change, that is possible only if it comes out of its inactivity. Allen Ginsberg's Poetry study guide contains a biography of Allen Ginsberg, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. He cannot stand his mind. The poem is filled with cultural and political references as well as references to incidents and events in Ginsberg's own life as well as the lives of his friends and fellow Beat writers. He is referencing two particular events here: the first is the rise of China as a communist power in the East. The reader must acknowledge that America can be seen as the country, the place in which people live, but also America can be viewed as a living being, because it is comprised of them. Communism will make all persons equal and these populists want only to maintain the discriminatory status quo. The prominent ones include Apostrophe, Anaphora, Personification, Rhetorical Questions, etc. Allen Ginsberg’s “Sunflower Sutra” is definitely a poem of crisis and recovery. Davis, Lane. Ginsberg's "America" recreates a conversation that Ginsberg has with a personified country, its people, and its values. In the first, Allen Ginsberg appears quite overly infantile and immature in his response to America’s actions, as if he isn’t a part of them. He says that “its cover stares at [him]” every time he passes the corner store. What is visual communication and why it matters; Nov. 20, 2020. Like "Howl," the poem displays the irregular meter and structure that was to be a hallmark of Ginsberg's poetry. Ads are what helps us bring you premium content! Hah. Go **** yourself with your atom He graduated high school in 1943 and did not go to war. “America” was one of the first widely read literary statements of political unrest in the post-World War II United States. Ginsberg used the "long line" as his creative foundation, experimenting and riffing on rhythm and meter in one long line that would be "all held together within the elastic of the breath....". I smoke marijuana every chance I get. Instead, he makes a final statement that is both a statement of his difference and a statement of his desire to work towards a better America. Ginsberg admits this sentimentality again in the next line of the poem (30) where he tells America that as a child he was a communist and is not sorry for that fact. He makes a plea full of sarcasm for the sake of poetic originality. Who are the Beats, you ask? "America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel." It was written on January 17, 1956, while he was in Berkeley, California. It is always speaking of the seriousness of businessmen and producers, possibly alluding to the conformist nature of American workers. Like, Henry Ford, he plans to assemble his poems as he likes individuals from others as sexes are from each other. Nov. 21, 2020. The poem's first stanza is somewhat of an introduction that sets the time and context for the poem.
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