In Back of the Real
In Back of the Real - meaning Summary
Beauty Amid Industrial Decay
Ginsberg describes finding a small, ugly yellow flower in an industrial setting and reflects on its stubborn presence amid decay. The poem contrasts factory, asphalt, and hay with the flower’s brittle, soiled details, then elevates it as both object and symbol, calling it the world’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’
Read Complete AnalysesRailroad yard in San Jose I wandered desolate in front of a tank factory and sat on a bench near the switchman's shack. A flower lay on the hay on the asphalt highway --the dread hay flower I thought--It had a brittle black stem and corolla of yellowish dirty spikes like Jesus' inchlong crown, and a soiled dry center cotton tuft like a used shaving brush that's been lying under the garage for a year. Yellow, yellow flower, and flower of industry, tough spiky ugly flower, flower nonetheless, with the form of the great yellow Rose in your brain! This is the flower of the World.
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