Ginsberg's America

I really liked this poem, especially with Ginsberg's reading of it. He made it sound like someone's actual conversation with America (though maybe a disjointed or one-sided conversation). The bit around lines 80-90 was especially good to hear out loud because it gets across him making fun of the stereotypes against "them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians." Throughout, there seems to be a tone of childishness and silliness ("Everybody's serious but me") even though Ginsberg insists, "America this is quite serious." He boasts about things he's done wrong, such as smoking marijuana, not saying the Lord's Prayer, and for having been to Communist Cell meetings as a kid and not being sorry. This kind of attitude is one a young person might have. Also, the way he repeatedly "talks back" to this America in the first part of the poem makes him seem like an unruly teenager: "I don't feel good don't bother me. / I won't write my poem till I'm in the right mind." "I'm sick of your insane demands." Silliness comes out in the way Ginsberg treats a serious subject, national resources: "My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour and twentyfive-thousand mental institutions." Perhaps the fact that "It occurs to me that I am America" causes him to say, "America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?" Here Ginsberg IS America, but is sometimes still addressing it and having discussions with it as if it were a separate person.