Ginsberg and "America" or Where Have All the Commies Gone?
When reading "America" by Ginsberg I was struck by the line "America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I'm not sorry." I couldn't help but think I feel sentimental too! Communists are practically an oddity at this point, a museum exhibit you point at it and giggle. But not that long ago they were the bogie man you scared kids with, the threat of the gulag and evil Soviet commies. But these days? There's Cuba but that doesn't scare us and China which barely deserves the right to be called a communist country. And Ginsberg throwing it in the reader's face like a rock through a window? Well these days it seems quaint and almost cute.
But in "America" it is an audacious line, Ginsberg uses it to establish his counter-culture credentials. And communists appear again and again throughout the poem, often sympathetically adding to the questioning, almost accusing tone of the poem. And this tone builds and builds as the poem unfolds, until it shifts and becomes satirical and finally plaintive at the very end. This emotional rollercoaster that Ginsberg creates is very effective, but when you reread the poem it becomes less so, seeming more disingenuous than realistic or unforced.
But the flip-side would not work either, if Ginsberg kept building his angry, accusatorial tone for the entire poem and built to a giant furious climax the reader would be exhausted and numb. His message would be lost under the waves of anger, Ginsberg knows this and is adept at shifting his tone over the course of his poem to underline his point, not overwhelm it.
But in "America" it is an audacious line, Ginsberg uses it to establish his counter-culture credentials. And communists appear again and again throughout the poem, often sympathetically adding to the questioning, almost accusing tone of the poem. And this tone builds and builds as the poem unfolds, until it shifts and becomes satirical and finally plaintive at the very end. This emotional rollercoaster that Ginsberg creates is very effective, but when you reread the poem it becomes less so, seeming more disingenuous than realistic or unforced.
But the flip-side would not work either, if Ginsberg kept building his angry, accusatorial tone for the entire poem and built to a giant furious climax the reader would be exhausted and numb. His message would be lost under the waves of anger, Ginsberg knows this and is adept at shifting his tone over the course of his poem to underline his point, not overwhelm it.
You make some great points, and I agree that Ginsberg knows not to overwhelm his message with anger. I also agree that China is not a Communist country – the former Soviet Union showed the entire world that incorporation of Marx's ideas into an authoritarian regime doesn't work. (I'm no expert, but at least in terms of agriculture I know China has recently become half "capitalist." Real people will not care to do a good job growing food if all of it is state owned, so the people in China are now allowed to keep certain portions of their harvest for themselves, and it's working.) Marx also would have turned in his grave if he saw the way Lenin interpreted "The Communist Manifesto" into what he wanted it to be. I'd read the "Manifesto" for an online course from Wesleyan, and was surprised at how well-meaning and caring for the good of society the text actually is! And it's only a theory, written at a particular time. Dare I say some of it maybe called "naive" in that Marx was a humanist who believed that people are inherently good – which is what I think Ginsberg might have meant when he wrote, "I used to be a communist when I was a kid," before he grew up and learned that a lot of people are not good.
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