Sunflower Sutra

Paper Masters custom writes all our research papers and we have writers that can explicate poetry such as Allen Ginsberg's Sunflower Sutra.

The facts about Sunflower Sutra include the following information:

• Sunflower Sutra is a poem written by American poet Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997).
• Sunflower Sutra was written in 1955 and originally appeared in Ginsberg's breakthrough work, Howl and Other Poems.
• While the poem itself is an account of walking through a railroad yard with Jack Kerouac, the poem owes much to Ginsberg's fascination with William Blake.

Opening of Sunflower Sutra

The poem opens with a lament, as he and Kerouac are saddened by the commercial, industrial society represented by the railroad yard. The landscape is blighted, but Kerouac points out the sunflower, which becomes an object of both horror and beauty, persevering in the hard environment. By titling the work a "Sutra," a Buddhist form of literature, Ginsberg is suggesting that the meaning of the poem is actually simple, and that all of humanity is connected.

The overall theme of "Sunflower Sutra" is the desolation of the American landscape. In the poem, Ginsberg and Kerouac discover a sunflower in a rail yard, however the flower is covered with dirt and soot, and becomes the leading metaphor of the work. Ginsberg's despair, which is revealed in other poems in the book, is tempered in "Sunflower Sutra" by the glimmer of hope he sees in the sunflower. The sunflower, representing America, is tarnished and bruised, covered in dirt, but retains the ability to shine forth beautifully once it is cleaned because of the inner beauty.