1. Read the poem "America" and listen afterwards to this partial recording. Were you surprised by this rendition? Speculate, highlight lines, etc, on the difference between your inner reading and the performative one.
2. Read Ginsberg's "The Little Fish deouvrs the Big Fish" and then Waldman's "History will decide". What strikes you about the transnational dimension of these texts? In what ways do they relate to an imperialistic drive of the US that connects with some of the themes of the previous diasporic authors you read in the class? (do not forget, again, this is a literature class- so point to concrete lines you might analyze).
I was surprised by this rendition. My inner reading was more serious; it was composed and resigned.
ReplyDeleteI think the performative reading started off relatively similar to my inner reading. However, after the line “Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb,” I would say that Ginsberg brings a playful kind of energy into the poem that my reading lacked. For example, in the lines “I don’t feel good don’t bother me,” and “I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind,” he draws out “don’t bother me” and “mind.” As a consequence, the poem feels more lively and upbeat. In contrast to this, my reading of the poem was very static.
In the lines “America when will you be angelic? // When will you take off your clothes?” Ginsberg puts the accent on “you” and “your” whereas I prioritized the verbs. Although this is a small change, I do think it influences how you come to interpret the poem. Ginsberg’s reading directly calls America out. In the performative reading, one gets the sense that these are questions that America has asked of others before, and that in the poem Ginsberg is flipping the questions back to America. This notion gets lost if you place the accent on “be” and “take off.”
Furthermore, in my head I read lines such as “I’m sick of your insane demands,” “America this is quite serious,” and “America is this correct?” with more venom. In Ginsberg’s reading, they are more playful. They are aggressive still, but aggressively satirical I would say. This doesn’t take away from the angry undertones laced throughout the poem; it expresses and channels feelings of anguish and frustration but in a different way.
While listening to the reading, I began wondering if this was the initial/original imagined and intended reading of the poem, or if Ginsberg started experimenting with his reading of the poem based on the responses of the audience. But I think that the punctuation (or the lack thereof) in lines such as “America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world,” “America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I’m not sorry” shows that the poem was supposed to be read in this manner from the get go. Moreover, the more you listen, the more you get into his rhythm of Ginsberg’s reading, and so, by the end, I felt that the only right way to read lines such as “America this is quite serious,” “America is this correct?” was in the bewildered, jocularly absurd way in which Ginsberg reads them.
The only part of my first inner reading of the poem that corresponded with Ginsberg was in the lines from “America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Call meetings…” to “...Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.” Especially, when it comes to the lines “America you don’t really want to go to war. // America its them bad Russians.” I also realized that it is quite different to read the poem in your head and to try to read it out loud. I had to read On The Road in the winter semester and I struggled with it a bit. My Professor recommended we read it out loud because one of the tenets of spontaneous prose was that one phrase was supposed to be one breath long (similar to a trumpet playing/jazz). While reading this part of the poem, I was reminded of this and reading On The Road.
A side note, I wonder if the line “You made me want to be a saint” is a reference to the Beat Movement, and specifically “beatific.”
This rendition was very surprising. I read it agressively and with a voice of a woman. I read every sentence like an attack, out of spite. The humuorous, sometimes sexy, sometimes snarky tone of the reader was unsettling at first. "When will you take off your clothes" - at first I thought it was an accusation and Ginsberg read it as an invitation, in a sensual way. I was also confused by the laughing of the audience in verses I never thought to be funny, like "America when will you send your eggs to India?".
ReplyDeleteIt is also interesting how in plain cold war, the author says he used to be a communist and he is not sorry, but later blames Russia for everything, in an amusing tone...this brings out many laughs from an audience, in a period where tension reigned. Makes me wonder what kind of audience this was...
There's also the slight differences of the writing in our antology vs the text Ginsberg read, like "its vocer stares at me every time I slink past the corner candy store", where in this last part he specified an address, that must be known ot familiar to the audience.
I wonder why there was a swap between "national resources" and "natural resources" in the spoken version?
In the end, even if the poem suggested that it was not to be taken serious, I did not expect it to be read in a cheerful, playfull voice. His voice sounds dragged, slow, like he was drunk...
Comment above writen by 151914, sorry, hit "publish" too fast
DeleteThe rendition was quite unexpected, as my way of reading the poem and the way Allen Ginsberg recites it—in a performance style, almost like a stand-up comedy show—are vastly different. We have an intense reading in which Ginsberg, in a decidedly politically incorrect tone, narrates atrocities committed by the United States government during the 20th century, but when you listen to the audio track, you notice the defiant and rebellious tone mixed with even dark humor, like a kind of 'my traumas, my jokes'.
ReplyDeleteThe lines "America, when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?" are especially shocking, but I think this is the necessary energy of the Beat Generation, where you seek to grab the attention of those in power and try to wrest it from their hands and claim it for yourself.
In "The Little Fish Devours the Big Fish," Ginsberg critiques U.S. involvement in Nicaragua during the Contra War. The title reverses the common expression "big fish eat little fish," suggesting that smaller nations or oppressed groups can push back against more powerful countries. The contrast between the "little fish" and the "big fish" works as a metaphor for the unequal relationship between the United States and countries in Central America. By focusing on Nicaragua, Ginsberg encourages readers to think beyond U.S. borders and consider the global impact of American foreign policy. The poem highlights how powerful nations often try to influence or control smaller ones.
ReplyDeleteWaldman's "History Will Decide" presents a broad, global view of political struggle. The poem moves between places like Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Libya, and Mali, showing that resistance movements are happening all over the world. Her repeated phrase "streets of the world arise" feels like a call for international solidarity, suggesting that people facing oppression in different countries share common struggles. Rather than treating these events as separate, Waldman shows how they are connected through larger systems of power and inequality.
These ideas connect closely to themes we have discussed in class, such as displacement, unequal power relations, cultural domination, and the lasting effects of imperialism. Although Ginsberg and Waldman focus more directly on political systems and international conflicts, their work raises many of the same questions explored by writers we have read throughout the course. For example, in Leslie Marmon Silko's Storyteller, the effects of colonialism can be seen in the disruption of Indigenous cultures and communities, as well as in the struggle to preserve stories and traditions in the face of outside domination. Similarly, both Ginsberg and Waldman criticize powerful institutions that attempt to shape or control the lives of others.
-Clarita Kroon