Poems typically take time to polish. I am an MFA student at College of Charleston, a fiction writer, and I would not dare call myself a poet. I have, however, written many poems, starting back in middle school many years ago. Until college, though, I sat and wrote a poem, felt a certain release upon completion, and then set that poem aside forever (except for the many scratched almost illegibly on paper-bag book covers). In college I began to understand how poems take shape, how poets often rework, revise, reimagine, and even totally rewrite poems in order to arrive at a point of accepted completion. For the poem that follows in this post, “America Still,” I did none of this. I wrote this poem in the same manner I once wrote poems in middle school and high school (admittedly, there were even a few I rushed through in college workshops in such a manner). All this essentially to say, I am not even near confident in this poem, nor close to calling it complete, nor do I feel quite as stark about the subject matter, but I am confident in one thing: I began to release my inner Beat poet onto the page.
Since the Beat poets emphasized the practice of allowing poetry to flow from within, to deny the deep urge to rework a poem, allowing the consciousness a form of free reign (whether or not they in fact adhered to such a practice), it seems fitting that my poem that follows is an initial draft, one that I reread only once and only made small changes to line breaks in that second readthrough. I was assigned the task of creating an imitation or a response poem aimed at a selection of poems from a group of the Beat poets. After reading a bit about the Beat poets, their style, their aims, their context, and then reading a bunch of poems from some of the most well-known Beat poets, I began to consider what I might write for this assignment. Two poems in particular jumped out at me, and they are the inspiration for “America Still,” below. Those two poems are Ginsberg’s “America,” and Corso’s “The American Way.” As I read these two poems, I thought about how not that much has changed, how the points Ginsberg and Corso make seem to have fallen on deaf ears.
My poem is sort of an imitation based on both Ginsberg’s and Corso’s poems, modeled more so on Corso’s, and it is also sort of a response; I think of “America Still” more like an update, though none of these designations are truly accurate. What emerged was probably more like my own thing, written with as little mental interference as I could manage, with as little reliance on literary devices as I could refrain from in the moment, and written in one long (-ish) sitting, from the first line until the last. My hope is that the Beat spirit lingers in there somewhere, and, whether good or atrocious, the Beat mode of minimal conscious neuroticism was a freeing experience, even if I have to close my eyes and hold my breath as I click “publish” on this post. One final note: this is the first time I have ever posted on a blog (in fact I don’t even use any social media), so please forgive me if the formatting is odd.
America Still
I hesitate to say America
is moving backwards
so let’s call America still
walking in place, slow
paced, like a lazy, complacent
stroll on a treadmill
I may not be a great American
America is a myth, the American
Dream is a myth.
I dream the American Dream
but wake to the American
reality, the dream turned
nightmare within
America still
It’s no surprise really…
a foundation built on evil
built on the backs of battered
despised hated feared people
people seen only as
dollar sign people
economic power people
political power people
certainly seen as less than
people
a foundation built on a myth
built on a marketing campaign
a slogan with little practical merit
a beacon on a hill, shining
meaningless without intention
of ever reaching the peak
a marketing campaign designed
to reach into our hearts
to create nationalistic pride
ethnocentricity, our way
the only way, the best way
see the shining beacon
that is us the fabricated glory
All men are created equal,
(All wealthy white landowning men,
are created equal)
a marketing rallying cry
for those who knew the true
meaning a promise unfulfilled, never
meant to be, a foundational promise
built on a myth, but wait! America says
that was long ago strides forward
have been made, and to that I say
sure…
see emancipation, joyous for many
for many seething scorn, a vendetta
see convict leasing
see red lining it’s ever-present effects
still heartbreaking still unaddressed
see murderous police brutality offspring
the racist underpinnings of the formation
police, the American origin still
echoes of prejudicial conceptualizations
impacting millions of our neighbors daily
in streets, in stores, in hospitals, everywhere
see America still insist on freedom of religion
so long as that religion is the right one
as interpreted by wealthy white men
Jesus from socialist to staunch conservative
see America still insist on government not
representative of a particular religion
but rally particular bases, religious leaders
herding sheep wherever desired
wherever assured they may keep
their extravagant lights on
see the great American divide
see power dynamics wealth disparity
corporate taxes wages
donors lobbyists shadow dockets
financing conflicts of interest
see blatant hypocrisy blatant lies still
everywhere proving we’ll believe
anything told enough by enough people
see nuclear stockpiles we’re allowed
but proudly disallow elsewhere
(oh, but we’re responsible, we
ensure peace, we’re deterrence—peace
established by threat of destruction
is not peace
but buying time, fostering animosity)
see hundreds of thousands of people
without representation (D.C. to Puerto Rico)
taxation without representation—justification,
our foundational claim of grievance
seeking support for revolution
an easier pill to swallow
so many easy pills to swallow
flooding the streets killing
stacks filling the morgues
stacks pooling in banks-
see marketed societal constructs
(you’re gross if you don’t wash every day,
you’re gross if you don’t shave everything,
you’re gross if you wear something other
you’re gross if you’re other
than what we tell you, let us tell you
what you should drink, you should eat,
you should buy, you should spend, you should sell,
we’ll make it easy so you don’t have anything
to think, don’t even bother to think)
see women’s place not so long ago still
a widespread mentality
(raise the next generation our way
but God stay quiet about it, until
of course you have dollars to spend, until
you become another untapped market, oh
and I guess you can vote since you pay taxes now
and made a big stink about it)
see the stifled voices the brave, the audacious, the motivated
speak about the dream of attaining
the promise of America, the true Dream,
watch them gunned down in public for daring
and witness the power of the American myth
see the rise in education, the banning of books
the importance of education, the demonization
of education the power of education
on the status quo threatening the status
of the masters
see education becoming a target
always a target
see the slug of progress ooze a gooey trail
creeping slowly along then some thoughtless
compassionless privileged children finally
get close enough to smother it with salt
methodically wiping away whatever remains
of that glistening tenacious trail of hope
see all the American serfs blinded
by the American myth the American
Dream the marketing gods maintaining
their kingdom of capital gains high
on the mountaintop of fortune, after all
the American dream is for the fortunate few
those with a fortune,
and bullets and triggers
for the rest of us,
triggers triggers everywhere
screaming triggers in schools
hairline triggers in homes
triggers in stores triggers on the news
propaganda triggers shame triggers
self-image self-doubt self-worth triggers
triggers aimed at everyone always
only alleviated by purchasing power,
fears, sadness, loneliness, disconnectedness
all sold in a neat package, wrapped in a digital
bow, sold complete with a cure, BUY NOW!
(we know you want to, we know what you want
we track your every consumer move your every search
your every insecurity and sell sell sell
that info to whoever pays)
see now the American myth, built on buying
and selling people, the same America still.
The myth of America pervades
penetrates every day, every facet
solidified social consciousness
America the free, screaming freedom!
as if it only exists here,
if it exists here at all,
America the constrained! America still
The land of selective plenty!
The land of divided people
discriminated people fearful people
The land of forgotten people
ignored belittled ostracized people
The land of value not values
The land of hordes of struggling people
gladly taking scraps from discarded plates
covered in oil tossed from private jets
leavings flushed from gilded toilet bowls
equality is a lie in America! still
we worship at the altar of America
give thanks and praise and our last dollars
to our lords, who realized the American Dream
America is a religion, consumers
are the pulpit, the constitution is the bible,
the almighty dollar is God in America still
Yet Americans are mostly good people
a fact not meant to be taken in any way
nationalistic, superior, mostly good people
exist in every single country on this fragile
wondrous world the people are not fully
to blame, the people must evolve the myths
must evolve the myths that keep us down
keep us in our place, people repressed
spiraling grasping at purpose acceptance
comradery fleeting feeling free alone
in angst in collectives marginalized
forcing forward from a fringe
this is not good, America!
Be warned, America, take notice learn
from history—where people feel unsteady
misfortune, being downtrodden
becomes a tiresome normality, wealth
becomes and remains visibly concentrated
at the upper echelon of society,
people cannot forever be kept oblivious,
or distracted with products or conspiracy theories,
these factors have universally led to downfall
Please do not let this happen, America! so
the next generations may finally approach
that hill reach out and touch that shining beacon
and begin to make good on the promises
of the American myth, so there will be
an America still.
Great work here — it’s a solid imitation, and the way you set it up helps the reader sense how hard it is to get out of your own way in a poem like this. This poem, like Corso’s (and like many of the Beats’ American laments) is didactic and exhaustive, but it also leaves room in its associative flow for really striking turns, as when you write “stacks filling the morgues / stacks pooling in banks” or “gladly taking scraps from discarded plates / covered in oil tossed from private jets / leavings flushed from gilded toilet bowls.” These moments bring us closer to Ginsberg, whose “America” often seems to get highjacked by its own language, but these intrusions of other voices, but these leaps of logic and sense.
In any case, it’s really interesting to think what a didactic poem looks like as intentionally unmediated or uncontrolled. Like so many other contrary tendencies that Beats employe (mixing sacred and profane, the literate and the unlearned) this creates some interesting effects.
One similarity I noticed in your poem with a lot of the other Beat poets is a transition between more controlled, crafted writing and more extemporaneous writing later in the poem, as if the ideas start off in a box but then spill out. The way you start your poem exhibits a lot of evidence of intentional craft: “I hesitate to say America / is moving backwards / so let’s call America still / walking in place, slow / paced, like a lazy, complacent / stroll on a treadmill.” The vivid treadmill metaphor is clear and functional. Then you have some assonance in the words “place,” “paced,” and “complacent,” and some consonance with “slow,” “complacent,” and “stroll,” to overall give the opening of your poem a sense that you start out with a plan and then go more stream-of-consciousness from there. I think this is one of the things our readings this week pointed out–there’s often a lot of evidence in Beat poetry that the writers did carefully craft their work, respond to influences from other writers’ structures and styles and topics, and revise constantly, despite its reputation as a purely spontaneous form.