Crossing Nation
Crossing Nation - meaning Summary
Political Unrest and Personal Stakes
The poem moves from Californian landscape images into a catalogue of 1960s political turmoil: arrests, beaten activists, legal battles, and the mounting human cost of the Vietnam War. It links local scenes and named figures to national repression and media indifference, ending in a personal, rhetorical question about risk and allegiance: "What do I have to lose if America falls?" The tone interrogates civic responsibility and the price of dissent.
Read Complete AnalysesUnder silver wing San Francisco's towers sprouting thru thin gas clouds, Tamalpais black-breasted above Pacific azure Berkeley hills pine-covered below- Dr Leary in his brown house scribing Independence Declaration typewriter at window silver panorama in natural eyeball- Sacramento valley rivercourse's Chinese dragonflames licking green flats north-hazed State Capitol metallic rubble, dry checkered fields to Sierras- past Reno, Pyramid Lake's blue Altar, pure water in Nevada sands' brown wasteland scratched by tires Jerry Rubin arrested! Beaten, jailed, coccyx broken- Leary out of action- 'a public menace... persons of tender years...immature judgement...pyschiatric examination...' i.e. Shut up or Else Loonybin or Slam Leroi on bum gun rap, $7,000 lawyer fees, years' negotiations- SPOCK GUILTY headlined temporary, Joan Baez' paramour husband Dave Harris to Gaol Dylan silent on politics, & safe- having a baby, a man- Cleaver shot at, jail'd, maddened, parole revoked, Vietnam War flesh-heap grows higher, blood splashing down the mountains of bodies on to Cholon's sidewalks- Blond boys in airplane seats fed technicolor Murderers advance w/ Death-chords Earplugs in, steak on plastic served- Eyes up to the Image- What do I have to lose if America falls? my body? my neck? my personality?
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