Comparative Poems: Ah! Sun-flower & Sunflower Sutra

Mary Willa

Mrs. Honaker

Dual English 12

15 March 2017

Comparative Poems

            The sunflower is known to represent longevity and happiness. Much of the meaning stems from its name, the sun, which has been worshipped and is associated with spiritual knowledge and the desire to seek light and truth. The rich history of the sunflower makes it powerful a poetic symbol used in eighteenth century writing through to present day. It represents the changing of time and different actions or relationships that follow. This is seen in William Blake’s “Ah! Sun-flower”, written as a part of his collection Songs of Experience, in 1794 and in Allen Ginsburg’s “Sunflower Sutra” in 1955. Although Blake uses the sunflower to highlight the change of innocence to experience Ginsburg uses the flower to signify the path to obtaining knowledge in a country that has been tarnished. Written over a century apart both authors use diction, personification and a specific point - of- view to bond the passing of time and the human connections that are felt universally.

             Vivid diction is used by both William Blake and Allen Ginsburg to add significance in developing the theme in both poems. William Blake uniquely uses diction as the sunflower wishes to follow the sun westward to a “golden clime,” (line 3).  The author uses “sweet golden clime,” (line 3) in order to refer to the satisfaction of a final dwelling in the afterlife in contrast to purely stating a life after death. The author uses diction to characterize an unnamed dwelling but it is thought of as a higher place because of the perfect “golden” light that alludes to the timelessness of his utopian vision. This use of diction reveals Blake’s interpretation of a lifelong change from innocence to the experience gained towards the end of a lifetime much like the human desire to seek a place of solitude after reaching their goal in the afterlife. Whereas Ginsburg uses the phrase “gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery” (line 4) to show his distress of how man-made objects have taken over the natural landscape as he is surrounded in a growing industrial American city. Ginsburg uses “gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery” (line 4) to emphasize the corruption of a natural landscape and depict the change of innocence to experience rather than claiming the environment was tainted by pollution. Although both Blake and Ginsburg use diction to stress the importance of the subject, a sunflower, the meaning of the sunflower is to signify the change of innocence to experience and reflect the corruption of society through nature. 

            In Blake’s “Ah! Sun-flower” and Ginsburg’s “Sunflower Sutra” figurative methods function past the physical depiction of the flower; they help contribute to the deeper understanding of the theme portrayed by each writer. For example Ginsburg alludes to Jack Kerouac, as he points to the sunflower he observes its shadow to be “as big as a man,” (line 9) and as the shadow progresses the sunflower seems to become a man. He later creates vivid imagery for the setting to describe the vast amount of pollution on the sunflower “smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye…seeds fallen out of its face…sunrays obliterated on its hairy head…leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem…a dead fly in its ear,” (lines 17-23). Ginsburg goes on to describe the sunflower to be covered in filth because in his mind he sees the flower as a representative of himself and all of humanity. “Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive?” (line 42-43). Ginsburg uses this depiction to emphasize how the sunflower, something pure, has been polluted to reflect a tarnished society rather than simply stating the society has become impure. William Blake also personifies the sunflower as an individual “Weary of time… the pale Virgin” (line 6). This phrasing embodies the character of the sunflower and gives it somber human emotion to mirror corruption of nature and corruption of society. Even though Blake’s “Ah! Sun-flower” and Ginsburg’s “Sunflower Sutra” were written over a century apart both writers used a sunflower to personify their feelings on the world around them. Blake and Ginsburg utilize various figurative methods in their poems to influence the attitude of the reader in order to achieve a deeper understanding in a personal change of innocence throughout a country that has been corrupted.

            In conclusion, both poems are observations of events that concerned the authors – varying from Blake’s views of passing into an afterlife and Ginsburg’s frustration with a post war society, however both poems explore a different subject. William Blake’s “Ah! Sun-flower” is a reflection of regret and the feeling of worldly restraints “Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,” (line 1). This depiction shows how the sunflower is searching for a world where seeker stops looking and is at complete peace knowing it has reached its goal. In comparison, Allen Ginsburg’s “Sunflower Sutra” is a poem of crisis and recovery concerning global and political pollution taking place in 1960s America. Ginsburg is fascinated and horrified by the state of literal and metaphorical pollutants within the country and he is able to represent this through the physical sunflower. Ginsburg transcribes “Sunflower Sutra” in order to contemplate the current position of the United States and bring hope for a brighter future, just as the sunflower has continued to grow.

William Blake uses the physical representation of a sunflower in “Ah! Sun-flower” to focus on the shift from innocence to experience, while Ginsburg uses the sunflower to indicate the journey of gaining knowledge and guidance in a corrupted nation in “Sunflower Sutra”. Despite being written in two different time periods both William Blake and Allen Ginsburg convey their message through the unifying physical representation of a sunflower they both revel a different aspect of human concern to mirror the time period in which the poems were written.