The poem "In back of the real" by Allen Ginsberg really struck me off guard when I first read it since I haven't been exposed to too many Ginsberg poems before. The syntax, the isolated feeling, and contrasting images all work together in a way that made me realize the beauty of the exhausted modern world. I have an attraction to this poem because I spent my teenage years growing up in south San Jose and I spent a lot of time skating and exploring downtown and the industrial areas of Silicon Valley and I never ever even stopped to think about how beautiful the city I lived in was.
Ginsberg takes notice in a small and crippled flower that "lay[s] on the hay on the asphalt highway" (6-7) and this line made me start to think that he was somewhere off of El Camino Real since the poem also has real in the title. If this is true, then Ginsberg really is an enlightened person since that highway grows nothing even remotely beautiful around it, but he is able to see that amongst all the traces of decaying civilization. These words actually make something transcendental out of the road that I've been driving on for all of my life and now all I can think about is how sublime a mundane highway can actually be.
Alex_H
Alex -
ReplyDeleteThis a really beautiful post. Succinct, but enlightened. Blake, who was a major influence on Ginsberg, famously stated, "To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower / Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour." You're definitely on the highway to the sublime with your reading and reckoning of Ginsberg's "In Back of the Real." Excellent work.
- T
I never considered that it could be referencing El Camino before. I think your interpretation is really clever, and it's definitely got me thinking about the road as well. I, too, travel up and down that street all the time and never took the time to appreciate it but thinking that Ginsberg may have seen something there that I have ignored my entire life is eye opening! Very insightful!
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