“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,” 1955 landmarks a new age of poetry, when 29 year old Allen Ginsberg released his bestselling publication “Howl and other Poems,” through City Lights Publishing.  Years of living in a capitalist America under the roof of his mentally ill mother, Ginsberg gained a passionate dislike for the wealthy class. Once he enrolled in Columbia University, he vowed to live his life to improve and protect the working class.  The New York City environment he lived his adult life shaped his major beliefs as apolitical radical, free speaker, and the key leader of the Beat Movement.  His favorite poets, Walt Whitman and Edgar Allen Poe influenced him greatly in his poems advocating the terrors of war, the corruption of society and the troubles of the common man. 

…”War Profit Litany” describes the terrors of war through powerful language, images, and references to war lords in congress as aggregates and drunks. Ginsberg yet again speaks to the masses just as in “Velocity of Money,” expressing the terrors of war by listing “the names” of the corporations, combines, manufacturers, and supporters of the war,

specifically the Vietnam War. Similar to “Velocity of Money” in theme and structure, “War Profit Litany” defines Allen Ginsberg’s anger with the government’s decision to protect capitalistic principles through war.

            Synonymous to most of his other poems, the tone of “War Profit Litany” remains calm, but aggressive, as if a speaker needs to read it with a straight face looking straight into one’s eyes.  Allen Ginsberg writes in this manner to express his loathing for the system, and uses this style as one of his many poems to degrade the name of the government… 

            “War Profit Litany” speaks informally to one because unlike most other people, Ginsberg understood that the problems in America were not created by one person, but by everybody in the system.  Therefore, he did not acknowledge them in the poem…

…he immediately breaks off into the image of “skin-burning phosphorous or shells fragmented to thousands of flesh piercing needles,” that are displayed as the profits of merchandisers who produced them.  Ginsberg understood that the manufacturers of those weapons of mass destruction did not acknowledge the death they will cause, because they are simply blinded by the money they will make, and the fear of losing endorsements from the government and military.  The manufacturer’s dependency on government money greatly exemplified corrupt capitalism to Ginsberg on an ethical level.  In references to the government, further into the poem on line 16, it states “and here are the names of the ambassadors to the capitol… who sit drinking in the hotel lobbies to persuade,” insulting those who represent government, considering them drunks.  All the companies involved in the Vietnam War which he lists in “War Profit Litany” were endorsed by the government in return for their products.  The napalm fruits of war only yielded death…