Allen Ginsberg: Breaking Away Restrictions

Each organ and cell of the human body works together to keep the body alive like the intricate parts of a poem work together to keep the poem’s message strong and alive. Each part is a clue to the poem’s message. Form is important- it is the skeleton of a poem. Poetic form is the core and mirror image of a poem’s central idea and this is clearly seen in the poem “America,” by Allen Ginsberg.

To begin with, this poem uses a rich combination of repetition and bad grammar to relay its message. The speaker is very direct by constantly addressing America by strongly repeating the word America. The content of the poem is consistently criticizing American’s conformity of beliefs and the expectations placed on those living in the American society at the time of the 1950’s. The strong repetition represents mockery of America and this leaves a bitter tone towards America. This repetition is shown through the majority of the poem, “America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die/ America I am the Scottsboro boys.” (70-71). Repetition is also seen in lines 84-85, “Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.”

This places strong emphasis on the bad grammar used when referring to “them Russians”. This style indicates that it is the ignorant and uneducated people who blame America’s problems on the Russians, Chinese, and communists. Again, we see the repetition of bad grammar, “…Him make Indians learn read. Him need big…” (91). This demonstrates how the speaker criticizes stereotyping by imitating the stereotypes of Indians and African Americans being uneducated. He does this by exaggerating their stereotyped speech. Ironically, it is unintelligent of those who believe such false stereotypes.

Additionally, Ginsberg’s poem uses unique stanzas and a varying line formation. The stanzas are extremely long and made up of one-line sentences, questions, sentence fragments, or small groups of run-on sentences. This variety can be linked with the variety of topics and ways to write poetry, ironic when compared to the constant referred conformity of American society which lacks room for variety. The one line sentences are very blunt. The speaker is very open with challenging the moral expectations placed on Americans, as every citizen should be. “I smoke marijuana every chance I get,” is an example of one of the speaker’s open challenges; marijuana was not accepted in society’s morals (30). This also gives the poem a conversational tone as the speaker writes in a stream of consciousness format. Questions are prominent in the beginning of the poem. These questions are very dramatic, asking the reader questions that are unanswerable. “American when will you be angelic?| American when will you take off your clothes?” (8-9). The reader, unable to answer these questions, is further lured into the poem. The groups of run-on sentences drastically grab the reader’s attention too. The speaker uses run-ons to mirror his message, such as to build energy and show an example of the paranoia felt during the red scare: “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…” (72-74). The tension is release at the end with the only complete sentence; “Everybody must have been a spy,” an example of the red scare which was another forced belief that Americans conformed to and exaggerated.