Ginsberg accepts the fact that things don't fall into place and embraces it by letting his words and phrases follow the same pattern that nature does, that pattern is a lack of although in both nature and Sunflower Sutra items still seem to fall into place. Shorter lines represent short quick concise thoughts and long breathy paragraphs represent an idea much longer and more complicated. For instance, " Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then" is a short line because the message of love for the flower is portrayed to the listener so quickly that no other words are necessary and the reader can breathe. "Poor dead flower? When did you forget you were a flower? When did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? The specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?", a series of questions that express a sense of hopelessness. These questions are listed one after another and the reader loses breath in desperation. The pattern of length of line and the amount of breath left in the reader playing a role in expressing the tone of a line is thus continued. .
Allen Ginsberg felt that poetry had a responsibility to bring a visionary consciousness of reality to his readers. At Colombia where he went to school he was taught to model his poetry after that of traditional English poets such as Sir Thomas Wyatt or Andrew Marvell. The structure and order of this type of poetry left Allen Ginsberg feeling that his poetry was not properly conveying his message and left him with a bad taste in his mouth. He experimented with certain drugs in attempt to open his mind and let things flow freely. This is successfully achieved in Sunflower Sutra. Ginsberg and his close knit circle of friends commonly referred to as the beat poets felt that the postwar prosperity of America was laced with hypocrisy, conformity and materialism.
This consumerism is apparent, glaring at us from the pages of "America", "Howl" and "Sunflower Sutra", a reflection of the world outside. ... The sunflower, once beautiful is ruined, and personified as Christ wearing a "battered crown" to show the effect consumerism has on humanity, that the people of America are willing to sacrifice nature for a temporary "fix". ...