Sunflower Sutra

Sunflower Sutra is the title of the poem. Its central theme is patriotism and hope. The poem suggests an America that has been tarnished and battered, but contains the ability to be redeemed and to be beautiful once again. In fact, the sunflower still holds the form of beauty inside of it, an Aristotelean view of beauty, and that beauty can shine forth if only people expand their thought to understand it as such. In this way, America and its core values - freedom of expression, progressive political and social thought - contains the inner form of beauty. Ginsberg sees himself, in the line of Romantic poets, as a prophet whose job it is to show this beauty to a country that has become rotten at its core.