The Rose that Grew From Concrete

I am currently taking a class on Orientalism and the main portion of our text is based on Orientalism by Edward Said. Said’s Orientalism illustrates binaries just as Brechin tries to. When I view San Francisco, I view it with an extremely realistic view, almost in the manner that Brechin does. I’m from San Jose and I still consider San Francisco as my city by the bay. It represents power and industrialization just as the West does in Said’s book and presents the other cities as the “other”. Brechin presents the city of San Francisco in a very realistic manner. I feel however that even though SF may represent something very industrious, it also represents something beautiful and something uplifting. It reminds me of a poem by Tupac, a prominent rapper and poet from CA.

The Rose that Grew from Concrete (By Tupac)

Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?

Proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk with out having feet.

Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air.

Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared.

The poem shows that something wonderful can come out of something so bland, so grey, so solid.

Ghosts of San Francisco and Brautigan

In the Halloween Mood

In the spirit of Halloween, I thought I’d share a poem by Brautigan about ghosts.


Boo, Forever

by Richard Brautigan

Spinning like a ghost

on the bottom of a

top,

I'm haunted by all

the space that I

will live without

you.

When I first approached this poem, I took it literally and saw it as the death of a loved one. I saw a young, torn Richard Brautigan mourning and losing clarity within his solitude. Then I reviewed it a second time and viewed it as a wounded Brautigan in an ended relationship. The loss of someone that he cared about and lived with had a profound affect on his life from my second interpretation.
Knowing Brautigan however, I saw this as a nostalgia for old San Francisco. I saw it as the world spinning around and changing. From the old shops and the amusement places to new condominiums, I saw the poem as a yearning for the former version of San Francisco.

Ginsberg, Forca, and Whitman: questioning

I saw A Supermarket in California as a critique of commercialism. Allen Ginsberg also used the poem to illustrate the ambiguity of his own sexuality. At first, I didn’t know too much about Garcia Lorca, but after some research, I found that he had a harsh struggle with concealing his homosexuality. Garcia Lorca was diagnosed as depressed in the late 20’s (it is speculated that this might be because of his ordeal with hiding his sexuality). The more famous that he became, the more difficult it was for him to hide his true self. In the case of Walt Whitman, he was more extroverted about his sexual orientation. Both Lorca and Whitman represent a form of Ginsberg himself: a man that is sexually ambiguous and authorial. These authors are torn between the line of being in the spotlight and being able to balance their private lives. Just as Ginsberg writes Supermarket mentioning Walt Whitman, Lorca once also did the same thing. Lorca’s admiration mirroring Ginsberg’s admiration for Walt Whitman presents a poignant message about their relationship: that Ginsberg does not wish to hide his life, and that he admires Walt Whitman’s openness. Supermarket goes from overtly sexual tones, using food as a metaphor for the audience’s sexuality. He critics American’s perception of sexuality by saying, “Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados! Babies in the tomatoes!” This section describes how the nuclear family is established, and how this societal pressure affects those that are not heterosexual to conform to the rest of the fruit in the grocery store. It continues to be very sexual when Ginsberg says things like, “Which way does your beard point tonight,” and “I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.”
When he writes to Whitman, he asks, “Will we walk all night through the solidarity streets?” in regard to sexuality. He wonders whether or not he will be able to stand proudly and openly instead of being confined to find clarity within his own solitude.

The Artist

Ferlinghetti goes against the grain and critiques those that stray away from their roots. He describes a group of people that were once original and daring that fall to the path of being the poster children of pretentious artists. He writes, "The party hoppers/wolfing down cheese and wine/without a glance at what might be considered art," to criticize how people fall into stereotypes and lose track of themselves. In this sense, he chooses artists to represent the assimilation of people within the field of art. The stereotypical artist, has wine and cheese, is well-dressed and analyzes other people art. He does into further detail as he says, "sheathed in silk and Christian Dior/ holding long stemmed glasses" to illustrate the assimilation within the the world of artists, people that are supposed to be have unique ideas that essentially, all end up the same way.
Toward the end of the poem he implies that a young artist falls into the trap of being a stereotypical artist.The artist questions, "...Is this/ what I'm painting for?" because he has lost his way within the art world. He has consciousness about the fact that he has strayed away from his path of originality and settled for the typical artist life. Ferlinghetti ends the poem by commenting, "No wonder then that he/ adrift this society/doth drink too much/ and roll upon the floor."This makes a bold statement about the artist, asserting that he "[drank] too much," meaning that the artist lost track of himself and found himself being consumed in pleasing the perpetual preconceptions about artists. By saying that the artist was "rolling on the floor" like a drunk person, he implies that the artist is not himself, but the artist was influenced by something beyond himself, and in this case, it was the people of the art world.