For me, Sunflower Sutra is the most concise, rhythmic, and interesting at the level of language of all of Ginsberg's poems in the collection "Howl and Other Poems." I like the way Ginsberg plays with similar sounding words and extremely long breath-lines, making it fun to read, especially aloud. "The banks of the tincan banana dock"is the best phrase of the poem and it appears immediately in the first line. There are many levels of alliteration in this phrase as well as visual rhyme (tincan and banana look very similar). The poem reads almost like a beautifully crafted sonnet, with well-though-out words and luscious language, yet it also puts forth a "fuck you" to the poets who write sonically within laid-out rules or form. The stressed parts of the lines follow no pattern - there are not "stressed followed by unstressed syllables,"like a sonnet might have. Rather, Ginsberg presents huge lines that seem to be a big jumble of stressed syllables (just about every syllable in "tincan banana dock" is stressed).
This poem, to me, pushes the limits of poetry at its time, staying close to the deeply intended and well-crafted words of the past but presenting a new, formless form that constitutes an era in its own for poetry.
Matt -
ReplyDeleteI'm interested as to why you think this piece is reminiscent of a sonnet? At least formally, Ginsberg is following in the footsteps of Whitman's "open field poetics," which was a refutation of strictures of traditional poetry (hence your aforementioned 'fuck you'). Perhaps in brief, parsed phrases you can pick up on some iambic pentameter, but overall, Ginsberg stays away from the forced rhyme schemes that are inherent in the sonnet, villanelle, et al. What is of interest to me, and I think could hold potential for your own future investigations, is to how the content matches the form? Why do the things that Ginsberg chooses to write about resist traditional poetic forms? And in what ways do these correlations become manifest in the politics that surrounded his work as a poet and as an activist? Good start - keep digging.
- T