Ferlighetti/Ginsberg Response: Representation in America

Both Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg complicate notions of America and issues of representation within America's vastly heterogeneous culture. Ferlinghetti utilizes images of imperialism and the vast class divide to disintegrate an image of America as a democracy, and rather re-representing America as an imperialistic plutocracy in his poem “To the Oracle at Delphi,” which was read at Delphi, Greece in March of 2001 at UNESCO World Poetry Day. More than five decades before, Ginsberg revealed America’s ignorance towards the non-dominating cultures, which had consequently created a lack of representation for the silenced majority through his direct address towards the nation in his 1956 poem “America”.
Ferlinghetti’s imperialistic illustration of America develops to reveal the lack of democratic freedom and problems of representation within a vastly diverse population. The speaker introduces himself as "Americus, the American,” but later asks “Why are you staring at me/as if I were America itself/the new Empire" ( Ferlinghetti 79). Despite the connection created between this speaker and his country, a divide is created through the speaker’s denial that he is a representation of America, thus distancing himself from the “new Empire”. Ferlinghetti links this imperialistic America to technology with its “electronic highways/carrying its corporate monoculture/around the world” (Ferlinghetti 79). These straightforward “electronic highways” are juxtaposed with the ancient artistic and mysterious glory of the "Great Oracle” (Ferlinghetti 79). This juxtaposition creates a tension between what America has become through the homogenization of “corporate monoculture,” with the root of the Western ideals it once stood for in it’s identification with Greek culture.
Furthermore, Ferlinghetti develops his complication of the image of America through suggesting a foreboding apocalyptic end describing this time as "the dusk of our civilization,” and requesting that the oracle (“[speaking] to us in the poet’s voice”) “tell us how to save us from ourselves” (Ferlinghetti 79-80). Ferlinghetti suggests that corporate America has silenced everything but technological advancement, and that we must turn back to the “Great Oracle”--“the poet’s voice”-- to truly advance as we turn back to our roots and original ideals. James Brook echoes this sentiment in his essay “Remarks on the Poetic Transformation of San Francisco,” "The contrarian streak in San Francisco still resists the corporate and bureaucratic agenda, the programmed slide toward uniformity of population and cityscape,” and yet, as Brooks also points out, “The self-destruction of the city (through this push to homogeneity and loss of art and diversity) may turn out to be the molting of a phoenix” (Brook 135).
Moreover, Ginsberg also accentuates the divide between how America as a country represents itself and those who actually comprise the nation. In the opening line of the poem, the speaker presents the sense of oblivion of self within this diverse nation, "America I've given you all and now I'm nothing"(Ginsberg 39). And yet later, the speaker attempts to reclaim the voice (and therefore representation) of America in stating, "It occurs to me that I am America./I am talking to myself again," and yet by the end of the poem, the speaker again addresses America, which dis-identifies the speaker once more with the running image of the nation and the violence and ignorance which it has come to stand for (Ginsberg 41).
Ginsberg also calls attention to many groups who are often silenced by the driving forces of dominant America. First asking "[w]hen will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?”, then stating (now speaking as America), "I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns" (Ginsberg 39;41). These recognitions of people who are often not granted a position from which to represent America complicates the image of America and idea of representation within a diverse society such as our own. In recognizing these people, Ginsberg suggests that it is their story we should be seeking to represent America--to truly live up to the democratic ideals we pretend to uphold.
Lastly, the speaker powerfully makes use of racist language saying, “Ugh. Him make Indians learn read./Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help” (Ginsberg 43). This use of racist language exposes racial stereotypes, as well as a racial hierarchy created through America’s history. Not only do these lines further recognize groups of people who are often silenced by dominate culture, but also admits past transgressions against our faux, professed American ideals. Moreover, a few lines later, the speaker suggests that these racist stereotypes come from the media, "America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set./America is this correct?"(Ginsberg 43). Thus, the speaker reveals the dominant representation of America as those with the money and power to control the media.
Both Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg’s representations of America propose we seek new voices and representations for our nation through poetry and recognition of underprivileged groups, while turning away from the dominance of “corporate monoculture” and popular media.