20 pages • 40-minute read
To Aunt Rose
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Themes
Memory
Typical for Ginsberg, “To Aunt Rose” focuses on the power of memory. Ginsberg uses vivid descriptions for his memories of childhood and family, creating imagery that brings his characters alive and sets the scene in a tangible place.
But the point of memory in this poem is not just to create imagery; Ginsberg is actively trying to connect with a past he feels is forgotten. This becomes clear in the penultimate stanza when the figures of the past all now exist in states of loss and forgetfulness. The books are out of print, the publisher is shut down, and people have sold their belongings, given up their passions, and now live in homes for the old. Where there had once been life, now there is death, old age, and loss.
Because of the loss that comes with the passage of time, Ginsberg feels a deep desire to try and immortalize those memories. This comes through in some of the words he uses to describe bodies, including “pedestal” (Line 28) and “monument” (Line 47), suggesting the memories live on in his mind like objects in his fictionalized “Museum of Newark” (Line 29).
It is also worth noting that every image of the past is filled with activity. People interact, dance, sing, advocate, write, and grow. But in the present, there is only death and loss. It is Ginsberg’s job, as the visionary poet, to capture the sensory power of the past and immortalize it in poetry. This is something poetry can do—it can give life to something that is long gone. This is something other poets have explored as well, including writers like William Shakespeare, who wrote, “Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade, / When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st. / So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee” (Shakespeare, William. “Shall I Compare Thee to Summer’s Day? (Sonnet 18)” American Academy of Poets, 1609. Lines 11-14). Here, Shakespeare points out that even if a person’s beauty will eventually die, a poem has the power to capture that beauty and allow it to transcend death. Ginsberg is doing something similar here, playing on the power of the written word to keep memories alive long after time has forgotten them.
Sexuality
Sexuality is a key theme in most of Ginsberg’s poetry. But unlike most writers who came before him, Ginsberg wrote explicitly about his and others sexuality, with his biggest preoccupation being the celebration of homosexuality. This was dangerous and controversial in Ginsberg’s time because homosexuality was not legal in many states and because, morally, most people considered it sinful.
But Ginsberg never shied away from expressing his sexuality, most famously in “Howl” (1956) when early in the poem, he celebrates anal sex in a vivid, descriptive way. In “To Aunt Rose,” Ginsberg’s exploration of sexuality is a bit more psychological. Because he is an adolescent for most of the poem, his character does not have many sexual experiences, and as is the case for most people, he begins to understand his sexuality primarily through his family dynamic.
The scene of him and his aunt in the bathroom plays out like a Freudian dream. Aunt Rose is a stand in for Ginsberg’s mother, who was famously in and out of Ginsberg’s life quite often as she struggled with schizophrenia. As Ginsberg stands naked in front of his aunt, he does not feel arousal, as might happen in a Freudian dream; instead, he wonders if she feels arousal for him as he is now becoming a man. The interaction and the play on gender that he uses late in the scene show Ginsberg’s realization at the time of his own sexuality.
There are a lot of ways to analyze this specific scene in the poem, but the key takeaways are how Aunt Rose acts as a stand in for his own mother and Ginsberg’s almost scientific fascination with his aunt’s sexual psychology at that moment. The scene mirrors a similar one in “Kaddish” (1961) when Ginsberg stumbles upon his naked mother and describes her vagina. In that poem, too, his descriptions of his mother are similar to Aunt Rose, including her sick body, black shoe, and some of her character traits, including his focus on her Leftist politics.
Death
The poem ends with a vivid description of Aunt Rose in her final moments. Ginsberg describes the hospital scene with crushing imagery, such as her “pale skull protruding under ashen skin” (Line 50), her blue veins, and her “oxygen tent” (Line 52). Earlier in the poem, he describes his memory of Aunt Rose as a ghost, and in her final moments, she once again takes on ghostly features. This is another example of Ginsberg lamenting a past that is no longer remembered, but it also acts as a way for Ginsberg to explore death, which he does throughout the poem. The memories fade away because the people in them die as time passes by. Not only do the people he knows die, but so do the world figures Ginsberg does not know. Hitler is dead just as Aunt Rose is dead.
The point here is that death is not just the death of an individual body or soul; it is the death of a time and all the things that come with that time. As Hitler dies, so does the era of fascism vs. communism. As Aunt Rose dies, so does Ginsberg’s childhood and so does the revolutionary spirit that Ginsberg believes defined that era. The resulting feeling is somewhat nostalgic, somewhat sad, and somewhat resigned. Ginsberg does not actually put his emotions about these things on display. This is common in his poetry; though many people often think of him as sentimental in his writing, Ginsberg actually avoids the inclusion of his own emotional reaction, instead letting his imagery create the emotional weight of the poem.
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