America

After reading this poem I thought Ginsberg fit perfectly the San Francisco hippy persona of that time.  The first line "America I've given you all and now I am nothing" sets the tone for the whole poem because he feels like he is an outsider who doesn't fit in with the American Way.  He would rather get high and be be on his own than conform to traditional ways.  The way he wrote the poem painted a perfect picture of his feelings, values, and attitudes, and whether someone agrees with him or not doesn't matter because he probably doesn't care.  He wants to live his way and thinks that America failed him in the past, or at least that's what I got from it. In this poem, Ginsberg's view of America is everything he doesn't like just about.  His view is that America is going in the wrong direction, getting to complex, moving too fast.  "Your machinery is too much for me".  "I'm sick of your insane demands".  I would imagine he is speaking for a lot of people at that time, especially in his city.  Accuracy is probably not the main goal, his point is to call out the American lifestyle, and that it is too confined, as in "you must do this, not that".  Validity in his mind is more important I would say,  He wants to get a point across.  He is speaking for his own lifestyle, and underworld.  What life is better? The "normal" Americanized way of life, or his view of the way life should be, making his own rules, setting his own goals and ways.