The Fall of America: Poems of These States

The Fall of America: Poems of These States, 1965–1971

Company type	Poetry anthology
Industry	Literature, Poetry
Founded	1973
Founder	Allen Ginsberg
Products	Poetry collection

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First edition

The Fall of America: Poems of These States, 1965–1971 is a poetry anthology authored by Allen Ginsberg and released in 1973 through City Lights Bookstore. This work earned Ginsberg a shared honor at the annual U.S. National Book Award for Poetry. The collection exhibits a visionary quality influenced by William Blake and Walt Whitman, combined with the detached perspective reminiscent of William Carlos Williams. Unlike much of his earlier verse, this compilation adopts a distinctly political stance, prominently featuring Ginsberg’s critique of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. It also addresses significant contemporary incidents such as the Moon Landing, the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the assassination of Che Guevara, alongside personal losses including the passing of Ginsberg’s close friend and former partner Neal Cassady. A notable aspect is that numerous poems were originally recorded on an Uher Tape recorder, which Ginsberg acquired with assistance from Bob Dylan.

Style

The Fall of America integrates diverse elements including poetry, travel narratives, autobiographical reflections, radio news excerpts, popular music, newspaper headlines, and journalistic commentary. This fusion creates a layered and impromptu ambiance throughout the work. The collection represents a progression in Ginsberg’s craft toward an increasingly unrestrained and immediate mode of poetic expression.

Highlighted poems within this volume include:

• "Beginning of a Poem of These States"
• "Elegy For Neal Cassady"
• "On Neal's Ashes"
• "Please Master"
• "Hum Bom!"
• "September on Jessore Road"

In his Collected Poems, Ginsberg categorized Wichita Vortex Sutra from Planet News and the entirety of Iron Horse under the section titled The Fall of America. The poems grouped beneath this heading in both Collected Poems 1947-1980 and Collected Poems 1947-1997 are:

• "First Party Ken Kesey's with Hells Angels"
• "Wichita Vortex Sutra"
• "Iron Horse (Poem)"
• "City Midnight Junk Strains"
• "Wales Visitation"

Trivia

Paul McCartney and Martin Glover, known collectively as The Fireman, took the name of their album Electric Arguments from Allen Ginsberg's poem "Kansas City to St. Louis." In the poem, Ginsberg depicts a journey along the highway in a "white Volkswagen" (a "beetle"), during which he listens to music and radio call-in programs while observing various signs and billboards:

Wooing the decade / gaps from the 30s returned / Old earth rolling mile after mile patient / The ground / I roll on / the ground / the music soars above / The ground electric arguments / ray over / The ground dotted with signs for Dave's Eat Eat"

The phrase "electric arguments" symbolizes both the radio transmissions carrying debates from talk shows and the glowing neon lights and billboards illuminating the roadside.

References

• Schumacher, Michael. (1992) Dharma Lion. St. Martins Press, New York. ISBN 0-312-11263-7