Analysis of "Song"
The poem "Song" by Allen Ginsberg is about love. It's about how overwhelming and "heavy" love can be but how in the end - love conquers all. This lyrical poem expresses Ginsberg's deep necessity for love, and how although the infliction of "solitude", of "burden", of "dissatisfaction" is indeed difficult to bear, we continue to thrive and move on because of love. Ginsberg carries an incomplete thought through two stanzas: stanza one - "...under the burden of dissatisfaction" then stanza two - "the weight, the weight we carry is love". His repetition of the word "weight" and the inclusion of an enjambment reinforces the voice and the feeling he's creating throughout this song-like poem. Line one in stanza three begins with a rhetorical question, "Who can deny?", which is answered by the following shorter lines, the majority of them being examples of how "the burden of life is love." Stanza five reiterates how strong love is by listing how the "final wish of love - cannot be bitter, cannot deny, cannot withhold if denied:", the use of it's repetition and stanza structure contributes to the voice and the strength Ginsberg is holding in the name of love. Stanza eight and nine close the poem and clarifies that, really, Ginsberg is wanting of a partner who will love him just as much as he loves them once again.
Analysis of "Homework"
Ginsberg's poem "Homework" is one big metaphor and exaggeration. This poem alludes to pollution, politics, extinction, war, and injustice. Ginsberg compares ridding the world it's many grievances to doing laundry. He lists several countries and places, and with each he mentions how he would "clean" the prospective country/place and what he'd clean it of. This poem is a disclaimer almost - a nonchalant but forward way of opening readers' eyes to what is occurring around the globe. For example in stanza one Ginsberg writes "...scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back into the jungle" referring to both the extinction of such animals on this continent, but also to the injustice other nations such as the U.S. (mentioned in the line before) inflict on Africa by taking their animals for their goods.