I received the most wonderful liberal arts education at the College of St. Thomas in the early 70’s. With the exception of the head of the music department there, my professors were exemplary. During my freshman year, I was fortunate to have a class in poetry, taught by an Irish poet in residence. His class was not just about Dickinson, Frost, ee cummings, Longfellow, and Yeats, though, we certainly studied those poets. He liked to shake things up and introduced me to the contemporary poets, numbered among them was Allen Ginsberg. The Ginsberg poem we studied was “America.” The poem was written in 1956 when the Cold War with the Soviet Union and China was just escalating into madness. The opening line of the poem is, “America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.” In the poem, Ginsberg reveals the myths we have built up about our country. He strikes at those myths with questions and statements peppered throughout the poem. “America when will we end the human war?” America when will you be angelic?” “America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.” “My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I’m a Catholic.” (Catholics were politically discriminated against in industry and politics at this time in American history. Incidentally, Ginsberg was raised Jewish, and died a Buddhist) “America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?” “America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.” The last lines of the poem are:
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in
precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and
psychopathic anyway.
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
(from “Allen Ginsberg: Collected Poems, 1947-1997”, HarperCollins e-books)
At times like these it is a comfort reading poems from Allen Ginsberg. Especially in his early poems, when, as a young man, he learned from experience the myths he was taught about our country were myths, and not truths, the outrage that is, at times, brutally expressed is an outlet for my own outrage. I am a child of the 60’s. I have seen and experienced my nation being torn asunder by the lies of politicians. It makes no difference whether it was LBJ and the Democrats, or Nixon and the Republicans. I have seen the city of Chicago go up in flames along with so many other cities over injustice. I have seen a president, his brother, and a holy leader, shot down in cold blood, the latter set up by J Edgar Hoover, who was the head of the FBI. I have seen soldiers fire live rounds into unarmed students at a college campus in Ohio. I have seen treachery and debauchery.
All these things that Ginsberg expresses in the 1950’s, occurred again in the 60’s, the 70’s, the 80’s, oddly, not in the 90’s when Clinton was president, then came back with a vengeance from 2000-2007. Growing up cynical of all authority, I should not be surprised by the turn of events from last week. Perhaps, I am naïve, but I keep hoping that my cynicism is based on false data. Yet, these hopes keep on crashing down. However, one cannot remain in this stasis of disbelief and cynicism. It is time to once more acknowledge, that Americans are their own worst enemies. As the character Pogo expressed succinctly in the comic strip of the same name, “We have met the enemy and he is us!” It is time, once again, to fight against injustice, tired though I may be. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, “America, I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel,” once again.
