Civilization Self-Destructs In J. Louis Zukofsky's Poems

The author argues that “civilization self-destructs.” The poem is written in 2005, and Ferlinghetti was born in 1919. He served in WWII and saw the ruins of Nagasaki after the atom bomb had been dropped there, which turned him into a lifelong pacifist. In 2005, the U.S was waging two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively, but other than that there was nothing that one could describe as remotely related to civilization destructing itself. One could argue that the event that made him pacifist, detonation of a nuclear bomb, made the world the safest place it has ever been. The creation of nuclear weapons led to what’s known as nuclear peace, an idea that the logic of mutually assured destruction prevents countries from nuclear powers from colliding with each other and preventing another major war. Furthermore, Americans, and the people of the world, were way more prosperous in 2005 than they were ever before, especially in 1919. One needs to compare the present state of the world to the past, not to some future, unachievable, utopian ideal. Moreover, an argument can be made that poetry, not civilization, self-destructs itself. Modern poets do not cater to current youth. …show more content…
Pleasure one might get from sight and sound of a poem is subjective. Intellection or process of understanding is more objective because what one understands is a meaning of poem. Because of the aforementioned reasons, one could argue that Ferlinghetti’s poem contradicts itself and is completely devout of meaning and fails to deliver its message in the right way. All the same, a literary critic has to keep in mind that the poem is to be heard and most people who hear the poem would not go ahead and try to find the above mentioned contradiction and generally lack of logic and truth in the poem. Pleasure a poem affords at sight and sound probably trumps one at