Through careful interpretation of Percy Bysshe Shelley's A Defense of Poetry and Walt Whitman's Democratic Vistas, one can gain a holistic sense of poetry, what it is and what it does, applicable to literary texts of all times. It is also possible to better understand Allen Ginsberg's "America" ​​by examining the texts cited above. The poem's literary merit is best recognized through Walt Whitman's Democratic Vistas, although Percy Bysshe Shelley's A Defense of Poetry also provides some very critical parallels to the poem and its characteristics. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Ginsberg's "America" ​​was written in 1956, a time when beatniks and beat poetry were popular. The poetry is in fact a reflection of the beat style; it feels like a conversation with its spontaneity and honest tone. It reads like a monologue, incorporating a stream-of-consciousness feel, which causes confusion on the part of the reader: “You should have seen me reading Marx./My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right./I won't say the Lord's Prayer./I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations" (Norton 136). The confusion that Ginsberg evokes in his poem is necessary to give the reader an idea of ​​how the poem came to Ginsberg's mind. While reading the poem, the reader feels as if he or she is in the mind of the author. The content of the poem focuses on what America is doing to itself and its people through the decisions it makes. Ginsberg expresses the thoughts of Americans who were isolated from mainstream society at the time. It expresses the collective fear of the (then) imminent threat of nuclear war. He also delves into the feeling that the entire country was ruled by the media: “Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?/ I'm obsessed with Time Magazine./ I read it every week./” (137). Ginsberg found his inspiration for both the content of his poetry and his style in the writings of Walt Whitman. “So these poems are a series of experiments with the formal organization of the long line… I realized at the time that Whitman's form had rarely been explored further…” (636). Therefore Allen Ginsberg continued to attempt this form that inspired him so much and it is no coincidence that Ginsberg's style is often similar to that of Whitman. In reference to Ginsberg's emulation of Walt Whitman's content, the Norton Anthology, Postmodern American Poetry, states that, "Ginsberg proposed a return to the immediacy, egalitarianism, and visionary ambitions of Blake and Whitman." (130). His poem "America" ​​addresses themes of democracy, something Whitman's poetry also does. However, unlike Whitman, Ginsberg takes a more questioning stance on America and does not use his poetry to praise the nation. American landscape while retaining an attractive modesty." (130). Allen Ginsberg not only answered Whitman's "call" but also his six-verse poem "America" ​​with one of his own. Walt Whitman's call for "great conscious American citizens" appeared in substance in his unconventional essay, Democratic Vistas. In this essay, Whitman invites attempts like Ginsberg's through the statement: "There has never been anything more desired than today, and here. in the United States, the poet of the modern, or the great man of letters of the modern, is sought after." (675). The need for such a modern poet in the United States derives from Whitman's belief that the arts, and in particular poetry, are the basis of growth and self-discovery and a necessity for democracy "Especially in all previous countries, a big oneoriginal literature will certainly become the justification and support (in some respects the only reliance) of American democracy". (675). He considered democracy not only as a political theory, but also as a cultural idea. From this cultural vision of democracy came the his belief, much like that of Percy Bysshe Shelley, that the poet's role is not simply to act as the "unrecognized legislator" of humanity, but to act as an "essential formative influence in shaping the future of democracy." (673). Democratic Vistas repeatedly mentions the idea of ​​individualism within the aggregate (676). Whitman states that the mission of government is “to train communities through all their degrees, beginning with individuals and ending again, to govern themselves…” (677). This concept of democracy, which implies self-government and autonomy, reflects Whitman's egalitarian beliefs and his attempts to focus on the identity and potential of individuals (673). Ginsberg agreed with Whitman on many levels, but especially with his focus on equality and the potential of the individual. Like Whitman, Allen Ginsberg valued democracy and its perpetuation. His work arises from the idea that the individual's thoughts and experiences resonate with the masses: "It occurs to me that I am America" ​​(137). After that line in the poem, Ginsberg's tone temporarily shifts to that of America: "Asia is rising against me... I had better consider my national resources... I say nothing of my prisons nor of the millions of disadvantaged people who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns." (137). He places so much emphasis on being the voice of America, that for a while in this poem he becomes America. This idea reflects Ginsberg's belief that prose is personal and comes directly from the person of the writer (130). Ginsberg's feelings towards America in his personal life emerge in his poetry as he transforms into America. Allen Ginsberg personifies America in the poem and this is obvious to the reader in the way the narrator speaks to or about America. The reader must recognize that America can be seen as the country, the place where people live, but America can also be seen as a living thing, because it is made up of them. Here, however, Ginsberg seems to portray a living body with one voice and one mind. The voice being that of the masses and the mind being controlled by the media, Ginsberg's role in the poem is to speak for those who are unheard and to distance himself from the media-dominated American "mind". Considering the value that Whitman placed regarding literature as a way to reach the masses and convey a message of self-expression, one should have no difficulty in admitting that Whitman would greatly admire the literary expression of Allen Ginsberg. Whitman believed that great writers would bring about a cultural revolution and that the literature of the past would be insufficient to accomplish this task (lesson 9/13/04). Therefore, Ginsberg's conflicted voice in "America", which represented the voice of the oppressed, was effective in bringing about a cultural revolution through literary expression. If Percy Bysshe Shelley were to engage with "America," he would first suggest that it is the expression of Allen Ginsberg's The Imagination (538). Shelley said that language itself is poetry, so "America," which is certainly composed of language, would be, by Shelley's definition, poetry. He says: "being a poet means grasping the true and the beautiful, in a word, the good that exists in the subsisting relationship, first between existence and perception, and secondly between perception and expression". (539). Secondthis definition, Shelley may find it difficult to classify "America" ​​as poetry. It doesn't capture the beauty; instead it encapsulates the wrongdoings and ugliness of this country: "America, when are we going to end human warfare?... America, you don't really want to go to war... America, this is pretty serious." (136-137). Ginsberg's words agree with Shelley's definition of how a poem exists; Ginsberg existed and perceived these wrongdoings of American society and government and then expressed them. Shelley states that “poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.” (550). If Ginsberg were to confront this “truth,” he might suggest the opposite. “America” is not a record of Ginsberg's best and happiest moments, but of his negative experiences and miserable observations of his homeland. Shelley believed that it was impossible for a man to say, "I will compose poetry." He says that "the mind in creation is like a coal that goes out" and that from an invisible influence an inner luminosity awakens. From this brightness and inspiration poetry is born, as Shelley claims, "but when this composition begins, the inspiration is already in decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a faint shadow of the original conceptions of the poet." (549). Perhaps hearing this echo from his later influences, Ginsberg attempted to follow Shelley's advice. "I thought that I would not write a poem, but would simply write what I wanted without fear, letting go of my imagination, opening the secret and scribbling magical lines from my real mind - summing up my life - something I could not show to someone, write for the ear of my soul and for a few other golden ears." (635). While this strategy worked for Allen Ginsberg, as it was the method he used to begin writing his best-known work, “Howl,” Shelley may not have intended the poet to use free-flowing stream of consciousness as his primary mode of communication in poetry. This use of stream of consciousness is also evident in "America" ​​in a line where Ginsberg says, "I won't write my poetry until I'm in my right mind." (136). The irony of this statement is that the author was writing his poem whether he was in his right mind or not. Shelley perhaps intended Ginsberg's strategy to be used as a brainstorming method, not to produce final results in an abstract, streaming chain of words. Ginsberg suggests however: "The mind is shapely, the art is shapely. Meaning The mind practiced in spontaneity invents forms in its own image and arrives at Last Thoughts. Loose ghosts crying for the body seek to invade the bodies of living men . I hear ghostly Academics in Limbo screeching about the form." (635). Allen Ginsberg refers here to his predecessors, including Shelley, and was aware of the stylistic and formal changes in his poetry that would make it subject to interpretation and defense. Although Percy Bysshe Shelley's Defense of Poetry supports and defends Allen Ginsberg's attempts to express himself and create beauty through writing in many ways, Walt Whitman's essay, Democratic Vistas, celebrates Ginsberg's work with fewer contradictions. It would seem obvious that Ginsberg believed that Whitman was addressing him directly through his essay: "I feel, with despondency and amazement, that among our geniuses and gifted writers or orators, few if any have yet really spoken to this people, created a for them the creation of individual images, or have absorbed the central spirit and idiosyncrasies that are their --- and which, therefore, in the higher ranges, so far remain entirely unsung, unexpressed (679). if not, 2005: (673-685).