William Blake's poem, "London", was written in 1792 and is a description of a society where the individuals are captured, exploited and contaminated. Blake starts the poem by talking about the economic system and moves to its results of the selling of people in just a locked system of exploitation. One method that is utilized is the repetition of a particular word to help highlight its so this means to the fullest amount. Blake uses the term "charter'd" (1-2) in the first stanza to describe the road and river of Thames. The word gives the river and street an extremely legalistic feel as though they are secured by laws and are privately owned. Blake moves on to explain the way the people have noticeable "grades" (3-4) of weakness and woe that happen to be like obvious brands of sorrow and problems. In the second stanza Blake strains the word "every" (5-7) five times. This expression gives us the sense of commonality to everyone anguish. It says that no one in London is immune system to the exploitation and disease. This idea is driven home with the words "mind-forg'd manacles" (8) which symbolize a modern culture in chains; imprisoned by ideology and status quo. It is possible to assume that there is no deviance from the status quo as the stanza itself has no deviation from its rigid iambic tetrameter meter and A-B rhyme program. The strict adherence to poetic meter in this stanza firmly contrast the abnormal meter of the 3rd stanza.
In the third stanza Blake lists out several cultural positions that are afflicted by the turmoil; the Chimney-sweep, Chapel, and the Soldier. The job titles outlined in the stanza are capitalized making them pronouns and personified. The chimney-sweeper is a amount of pity and industrialization because due to the ever increasing amount of dirty chimneys blackening the complete city with soot. The Church is "black'ning" (10), its reputation is now more tarnished as it is wanting to dismiss or glaze over the brutal smoke belching current economic climate that Blake is explaining. The metaphor of the Soldier's bloodstream on the Palace Surfaces demonstrate not just a mistreatment of military but also an unhealthy leader of the country building a disjointed society. Proof this disjointness can be found in the framework of the 3rd stanza as it no longer adheres to a rigid iambic tetrameter meter. We see this disjointedness in poetic meter persists into the last stanza where Blake uses the strategy of enjambment to highlight the "Harlot's curse"(14) and "Infant's rip" (15). It really is now dark and the younger looking Harlot does not have an opportunity to lover her baby since it is a result of commerce rather than love. She passes her own misery onto the child who will likely continue transferring it onto future years. She also moves on her behalf disease to cheating husbands which lead us to the powerful phrase "the Relationship hearse. " (16) The matrimony hearse is an oxymoron for the idea of a happy marriage being undermined by death and disease and causing the marriage to become funeral procession for love and independence. Blake's poem is designed to imply that perspective is required to lift up London out of despair and away from its economy powered exploitation.
Allen Ginsberg's poem "A Supermarket in California" is a protest poem directed towards postwar North american society and concentrates most on the consumerist areas of society and the lack of connection between your modern world and characteristics. "A Supermarket in California" is written in prose form and will not adhere to any kind of traditional meter or rhyme plan which makes it a surprising and offbeat poem that is sure to stand out which is just what a protester would want. Ginsberg is quick to start the theme of consumerism by going "shopping for images" (2). In this case the images aren't real as he is longing for culture to return back to their state it is at pre-war during Whitman's time. The supermarket in this range also introduces the idea of capitalist America where fruits is produced in higher quantities to be the same and is not necessarily produced in the wild. Another few lines illustrate how families are now shopping at night rather than through the daytime. It can be implied that these households are perfect nuclear households and anyone would you not fit in to the family structure stands out as being individual from population and considered unnatural. They in this poem are Gracia Lorca, Walt Whitman, and the presenter himself Allen Ginsberg most of whom are homosexual and also have lost their devote society. In this time around period, the homosexual community is never discussed and is not accepted by the norms of society as it may have been around in Whitman's time. Ginsberg records Whitman as a homosexual because he's described as "childless, lonely, old grubber" (4) rather than as a husband. It's possible that Whitman is brought into the poem as a way of juxtaposing what Whitman referred to America to maintain his poetry, and what America is becoming in Ginsberg's poetry. The lines "who killed the pork chops? What price bananas?" (5) cause questions of economics. In Whitman's day a consumer would know where in fact the food originated from, who wiped out it, and exactly how it acquired its price. It is implied that Whitman's questions cannot be solved by the the store employees. Ginsberg says that scheduled to consumerism, we no more know just what we live buying and are therefore no more connected to characteristics through the produce available at a supermarket. Ginsberg also uses Whitman's tasting spree through the store as a way of exhibiting that in Whitman's day there was no capitalism that required you to definitely always pay for your pleasures. There is a advice here that paying for ones pleasures is not natural. The collection "the gates close in an hour" (8) shows that Ginsberg is beginning to recognize that his perspective of Whitman's perspective of the natural world will not go on as it cannot endure the modern market were you can buy everything at a price. Their search through "solitary roadways" (10) past symbols that represent "the lost America" (11), which Whitman detailed in his poetry, is only going to cause them to the definite darkness and loneliness in today's modern culture. Ginsberg closes the poem by evaluating "the lost America" (11) to Hades. Charon was the guardian of Hades who ferry souls over the river Styx. Charon ended short and let Whitman from the "smoking standard bank" (12) of Lethe. The river Lethe, according to Greed mythology, would cause forgetfulness to people who drank from it. One can surmise that Ginsberg is referring to modern society and how it forgets its past and the difference between what is natural and exactly what is a product of humans. This is what ties Ginsberg's protest against modern America mutually. The peach, the porkchops, the bananas in the supermarket no more create a marriage between the consumer and the natural world that the berries originated.
Allen Ginsberg's and William Blake's poems are both cases poetry made to make a declaration about how society has modified for the worse which a better alternate must be found. Even though these portions were written over sixty years ago, we can still find a way to relate with them today. The idea of society shedding touch with nature as it is portrayed in Grinsberg's poem "A supermarket in Califoria", continues to be a problem with today's prepared food, indoor berry factories, and now even greater supermarkets. Sadly the impact of William Blake's poem has lost quite a bit of its great shock value on today's culture but we can still relate to the idea of mechanization with the encroaching robotic forearms spread of incurable diseases. If we can feel the impact of the poetry now in 2011, consider how much impact and surprise value the parts would have possessed on their followers when these were first written.
