Hello and welcome to the Discourse. ‘Sunflower Sutra’ is a free verse poem by Allen Ginsberg published in 1955. Ginsberg’s poetry was strongly influenced by Walt Whitman and he always maintained that William Blake was his idol. In 1948, Ginsberg claimed that he had visions of Blake reading his poems. One of Blake’s poems that Ginsberg claimed he heard in his vision was “Ah! Sunflower”. Blake’s "Ah! Sunflower" mentions a withering sunflower ‘weary of time.’ Still, the poem ends with a positive note suggesting that the sunflower will reach the heights of spirituality and be with the celestial beings.
Ginsberg’s poem ‘Sunflower Sutra’ follows a similar pattern. Ginsberg describes America as a sunflower in withering dilapidated condition. He tells about a desolate American landscape, destroyed and devastated by the careless work of modern society, capitalism, and consumerism. However, he ends the poem on a hopeful note, suggesting that he will preach a “sermon” of light to all who see only despair in their country and their lives.
In Blake’s poem, the sunflower is a metaphor for the soul seeking the afterlife. In Ginsberg’s poem, the sunflower symbolizes the individual, Ginsberg himself, and many others suffering the ills of the war-oriented consumerist, capitalist American socio-political scenario of that period. In ‘Sunflower Sutra’, the murky industrial world of postwar America has corrupted Blake’s sunflower, leaving it ‘dusty with the smut and smog and smoke’ in its eye.
Structure of ‘Sunflower Sutra’:
It is a long poem, 63 lines of varying lengths written in free verse, following no definite meter or rhyming scheme. There is no division of the poem in specific stanzas. The poet used Assonance, Anaphora, Consonance, Imagery, Metaphor, Rhetorical Question, and Symbolism in the poem. The main theme of the poem is the triumph of individuality. It is a poem of crisis and recovery. Ginsberg’s sunflower suggests an America that has been tarnished and battered by the carelessness of modern society but contains the ability to be redeemed and to be beautiful once again. In observing the “dead gray shadow” that is the sunflower Ginsberg finds both beauty and horror within it.
Summary of ‘Sunflower Sutra’:
Part 1 Lines 1-9
“I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery.
The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves rheumy-eyed and hung-over like old bums on the riverbank, tired and wily.”
The speaker opens the poem while lamenting how industrialization and modernization have ruined the landscape of America and mourns the loss of a “wild” West and the end of the American frontier.
Ginsberg uses the phrase ‘tincan banana dock’ in the opening line. "Tincan banana dock" is an expression that consists of basic words that have no apparent meaning. The expression is often read as a juxtaposition of images, often contrasting nature and humanity, and government and sex. The speaker uses varied images to depict the growth of modern industrial and commercial society which is hazardously polluting the natural environment. The speaker says that he sits down “under the / huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive” and looks at the sunset over “the box house hills....” (1-3) The scene of growing urbanization in the face of this beautiful sunset only makes the speaker cry. Ginsberg is not alone though, his friend Jack Kerouac is sitting alongside him and he shares the same pain. They weren’t sitting in a lush garden with tall trees, rather they were surrounded by the “gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery” and they were lamenting the loss of nature.
Ginsberg uses natural imagery to depict industrial blight. Ginsberg is using a technique that the Romantic poets used; a picture of raw nature meant to elicit a feeling in the reader of awe and respect for the natural world. Yet Ginsberg twists this imagery. It is not really a tree’s roots we are looking at but machinery and rusted iron. The reader is disappointed because nothing is as beautiful as it should be.
The picture of industrial waste continues. The river that the two see is covered with a film of oil that makes it impossible for fish to live in. The mountains that overlook San Francisco can no longer support the hermit who might live off the land. Ginsberg alludes to Thoreau, whose famous experiment at Walden Pond is a prime example of the American Romantic tradition. Ginsberg and Kerouac sit and watch this display of wasted land and resources, “rheumy-eyed and hung-over like old bums....” (9) In Beat literature, ‘the bum’ means a respected figure who became sacred by the sacrifices he made to live both in and outside the restrictions of the modern world. The bum is a part of the society that he hates, and the fact that he too is a part of the same society drives him insane. Thus, he chooses to live apart from society, from art, and from his own expression.
Lines 10-21
“Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust—
—I rushed up enchanted—it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake—my visions—Harlem
and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the past—
and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye—”
Kerouac shows a sunflower to Ginsberg a sunflower which appears to be an object out of place in such a blighted landscape that Ginsberg had described. But, as Ginsberg looks at the sunflower he sees both beauty and horror. Ginsberg first sees an abnormality of nature, a “dead gray shadow” that is “big as a man...” He believes that, at first, he cannot see what he is actually seeing and he has memories “of Blake / my visions - Harlem.” (11-14). Ginsberg remembers one of William Blake's famous poems, titled “Ah, Sunflower.” The poem references the beauty of youth that mankind strives for. Ginsberg’s poem is a continuation of Blake’s modernism, yet it shows the extremes of pollution and corruption that have come into the world. In the next few lines, the speaker continues to describe the deadly, lifeless pictures of pollution and environmental devastation that Ginsberg finds on the West Coast. New York is filled with the culmination of industry and this culmination has made the city foul and nasty. But there was a moment of redemption for Ginsberg in New York; it was the vision of Blake’s sunflower, “poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty / with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives....” (20-21).
Lines 22-46
“corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, …….
…….
A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze!”
The sunflower is a difficult thing for Ginsberg to interpret because, while it is meant to be an object of beauty, it has taken over the weariness and pollution of the environment it lives in. Yet, Ginsberg sees the flower as persevering in the face of such hardships and he relates to such action. The holy bums of the Beat poets must do the same. Ginsberg writes that “The grime (of the flower) was no man’s grime but death and human locomotives” (31). Ginsberg subtly changes the meaning of the word “locomotive” here. When first used, it denoted the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century and the way that revolution ended up paving a path of devastation. Here, when using the word, Ginsberg means himself and Kerouac and the other Beat poets. They have taken on the characteristics of the locomotive - always in motion, powerful, and dominant in their artistic landscape.
Ginsberg continues to describe the desolate scene in which he and Kerouac find themselves, yet this time he means to call attention to the plight of these human “locomotives” who find themselves in an America of waste and destruction. Much like he did in “Howl,” Ginsberg uses crude sexual imagery and vivid pictures of homosexual acts to wrap this American landscape into a picture of lewd censorship of its best minds.
These lewd, disturbing images are contrasted with the sunflower, the “perfect beauty” which is a “sweet natural eye to the new hip moon....” (45-46). Here, Ginsberg means to suggest that the Romantic tradition still has something to say to the modern industrial and corporate society. Just as the Romantic poets prophesied of the pending doom of the growing industrialism contrasted with the natural beauty and order of the world, so too can that message be translated into Ginsberg’s America and a “hip” new direction.
Lines 47-55
“How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the heavens of the railroad and your flower soul?
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!”
In these lines, Ginsberg clarifies what he means by the word “locomotive” that he used as a symbol. He also expresses more specifically what the “sunflower” represents. He clarifies that the sunflower represents America, a land once filled with the promise of progress and advancement. The locomotive was the symbol of that progress - a machine powerful enough to connect the coasts and bring about a revolution in transportation and human ingenuity. Yet, the sunflower, as well as the locomotive, have lost their luster and have in a way died. America has given up and decided that it is “an impotent dirty old locomo- / tive...” (51-52). But that’s not who America really is, Ginsberg says. “You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!”
Lines 56-65
“And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not!
So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack’s soul too, and anyone who’ll listen,
—We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we’re golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our own eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision.”
As the speaker realizes that America is not the pollution-creating machine ruining everything, rather, America is the sunflower, he decides to confront the corruption caused by the locomotive. His new vision of an America that remembers its progressive roots has taken root in his own soul, so he “brabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a / scepter...” (57-58). This message is so dangerous, and will be offensive to so many, that he will have to use this sunflower not for its beauty but as a weapon. Ginsberg knows that he will “deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack’s soul too, and anyone who’ll / listen...” (59-60).
Ginsberg ends with the beginning of this sermon. Humanity, and America, are not composed of the grime of industry, the greed of corporatism, and the violence of war. People are “golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own /see & hairy naked accomplishment...” (62-63).
The speaker decides to discard the corrupt locomotive causing ruin, blight, and corruption, rather he envisions America as a new kind of locomotive that may turn the desolate landscape as, once again, a picture of beauty.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of American English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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