"America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?"
About this Quote
A prayer trying to clear its throat in a room full of hecklers: that is the tension Ginsberg snaps into one line. “Holy litany” invokes ritual, solemn repetition, the long-breathed cadence of devotion. Then he yanks the register hard with “your silly mood,” a phrase that sounds almost tossed off, like a parent scolding a child. The clash is the point. Ginsberg wants holiness, but he’s writing to-and inside-a nation that treats seriousness as a social faux pas and packages even anguish as entertainment.
The direct address, “America,” is both intimacy and indictment. It’s not an abstract critique of a system; it’s a lover’s quarrel with a specific body, a specific temperament. In the Beat era context - Cold War conformity, booming consumer culture, the high-gloss optimism that papered over paranoia and repression - “silly” becomes a razor. It names the way power can trivialize dissent: if you can frame the prophet as melodramatic, the culture never has to answer the prophecy.
Ginsberg’s intent is also self-exposure. He’s admitting the difficulty of writing in a sacred key without sounding ridiculous, or being made ridiculous. The question “how can I” isn’t rhetorical defeat so much as a challenge: what kind of language can stay morally awake in a society committed to distraction? The line works because it stages the very failure it resists, turning frustration into rhythm, and making the poet’s problem - the mismatch between spiritual urgency and national unseriousness - the poem’s engine.
The direct address, “America,” is both intimacy and indictment. It’s not an abstract critique of a system; it’s a lover’s quarrel with a specific body, a specific temperament. In the Beat era context - Cold War conformity, booming consumer culture, the high-gloss optimism that papered over paranoia and repression - “silly” becomes a razor. It names the way power can trivialize dissent: if you can frame the prophet as melodramatic, the culture never has to answer the prophecy.
Ginsberg’s intent is also self-exposure. He’s admitting the difficulty of writing in a sacred key without sounding ridiculous, or being made ridiculous. The question “how can I” isn’t rhetorical defeat so much as a challenge: what kind of language can stay morally awake in a society committed to distraction? The line works because it stages the very failure it resists, turning frustration into rhythm, and making the poet’s problem - the mismatch between spiritual urgency and national unseriousness - the poem’s engine.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
|---|---|
| Source | Allen Ginsberg, "America" (poem), published in Howl and Other Poems (City Lights, 1956); contains the line "America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?" |
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