The poem originated as a voice recording that Ginsberg made with an
Uher tape recorder while traveling across the
Midwest. He composed it spontaneously, dictating the words into the recorder as they came to him. In transcribing the poem, Ginsberg arranged the lines by the natural pauses and dictation in his recordings, according to the "organic space-timing" that they provided. Throughout the poem, Ginsberg contrasts images of the Midwest (and, in particular, the
Kansan landscape) with snippets of news reports about the war, linking its violence with the political conservatism of the
Heartland. He decries
Carrie Nation's work in
Wichita, Kansas as beginning "a vortex of hatred that defoliated the
Mekong Delta." The poem also uses images highlighting the sensuality and intimacy of the human body to humanize the violence of the war. Such images are found elsewhere in Ginsberg's work. The title reflects Ginsberg's interest in
Eastern religions as well. In
Buddhism, "
sutra" often refers to canonical scriptures, many of which are regarded as records of the oral teachings of the
Buddha. Ginsberg also references religious figures, including
Christ,
Allah, and
Yahweh, in addition to various Indian holy men. A prominent theme running through the poem is the proliferation and power of language. As
Rolf Potts wrote in
The Nation, Ginsberg aimed to "reclaim language for its higher purposes," and that the poem is ultimately "an elegy for the power of language in an age of competing information." In his book
Out of the Vietnam Vortex: A Study of Poets and Poetry Against the War, James F. Mersmann writes that "a chief virtue of [the poem] is that it makes the reader experience the proliferation and abuse of language ... and in doing so, makes one painfully aware that in every case language is not to communicate truth but to manipulate the hearer." ==In culture==