America by Allen Ginsberg Leader of the Beat Movement Speaker Persona Poem with 4 stanza s written in Free Verse follows patterns of spoken speech almost a stream of conscious complaining Written 1956 and set in America in the 1950 s Disregard for grammatically correct structure run on sentences lack of punctuation used as rhetorical effect of disregard for respect of society America Rant about frustration with America as a whole Commentary on politics war sexuality culture society history literature censorship oppression Questioning Spirit Reflection talking to American talking to himself Themes of Dissatisfaction Madness Society and class Politics America duh A cool reading I found my Ginsburg over no church in the wild First Stanza Introduces conversation with a personified America addressing an abstract idea is called an apostrophe his feelings of dissatisfaction Reference to destruction of Hiroshima Nagasaki WWII Leon Trotsy Russian theorist revolutionary Troskyites people sympathetic to communism workers rights America I ve given you all and now I m nothing America two dollars and twenty seven cents January 17 1956 I can t stand my own mind America when will we end the human war Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb I don t feel good don t bother me I won t write my poem till I m in my right mind America when will you be angelic When will you take off your clothes When will you look at yourself through the grave When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites America why are your libraries full of tears America when will you send your eggs to India I m sick of your insane demands When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world Your machinery is too much for me You made me want to be a saint There must be some other way to settle this argument Burroughs is in Tangiers I don t think he ll come back it s sinister Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke I m trying to come to the point I refuse to give up my obsession America stop pushing I know what I m doing America the plum blossoms are falling I haven t read the newspapers for months everyday somebody goes on trial for murder America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I m not sorry I smoke marijuana every chance I get I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid My mind is made up there s going to be trouble turning point directly addressing America You should have seen me reading Marx My psychoanalyst thinks I m perfectly right I won t say the Lord s Prayer I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations America I still haven t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia Second Stanza I m addressing you Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine I m obsessed by Time Magazine I read it every week Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library It s always telling me about responsibility Businessmen are serious Movie producers are serious Everybody s serious but me It occurs to me that I am America I am talking to myself again includes himself in his criticism of society America Third Stanza Asia is rising against me I haven t got a chinaman s chance I d better consider my national resources My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and twentyfivethousand mental institutions I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns I have abolished the whorehouses of France Tangiers is the next to go My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I m a Catholic JKF Job of correcting the problems he has with society Ginsberg wasn t Catholic reminder of persona Fourth Stanza America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they re all different sexes America I will sell you strophes 2500 apiece 500 down on your old strophe America free Tom Mooney America save the Spanish Loyalists America Sacco Vanzetti must not die Scottsboro was a controversial racial rape case Tom Mooney was a labor activist making fun of Americans paranoia America I am the Scottsboro boys America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain Everybody must have been a spy America you don t really want to go to war America it s them bad Russians Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen And them Russians The Russia wants to eat us alive The Russia s power mad She wants to take our cars from out our garages Her wants to grab Chicago Her needs a Red Reader s Digest her wants our auto plants in Siberia Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations That no good Ugh Him makes Indians learn read Him need big black niggers Hah Her make us all work sixteen hours a day Help America this is quite serious America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set 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 Good luck on the final exam everyone