Can someone explain "A Supermarket in Califoria" by Allen Ginsberg to me?

Question

Can someone explain "A Supermarket in Califoria" by Allen Ginsberg to me? tell me what it is about.

Answer 1

This is Ginsberg's tribute to Walt Whitman, his "lonely old courage-teacher."

It is written more or less in imitation of Whitman: free verse, long lines, lists of concrete images ("dreaming of your enumerations"), emphasis on the I-speaker, syntactic parallels ("I saw you," "I heard you," I wandered," "We strode"), apostrophes to people who are not literally there, capturing common scenes ("Will we walk all night through solitary streets"), displaying a physical attraction to young men ("eyeing the grocery boys"), savoring America in a down-to-earth way ("families shopping at night," "brilliant stacks of cans," doors closing in an hour, "lights out in the houses").

Here is one commentator's remarks: "Ginsberg chose Walt Whitman as a hero and guide because he is a poet of everything; Whitman loves diversity. Whitman believed American citizens should not worry about making money, but instead, they should worry about being themselves. . . . Ginsberg picks a supermarket because it is common American institution invented by Americans. The Supermarket replaces the Open Market." [1]

I think you need to read the poem three times:

(1) Notice the actual, everyday experience of shopping in a supermarket, then walking home, lonely in the city.

(2) Notice what the poet's imagination does with the ordinary scene. He is "shopping for images." He begins to see beyond the concrete reality to "shadows" beyond: "What peaches and what penumbras!" He even imagines Garcia Lorca "down by the watermelons" [2], a Spanish poet of the previous generation. And, of course he sees Whitman almost everywhere he turns, "lonely old grubber," asking absurd questions: "Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my angel?" What he is doing is transporting Whitman into the mid-20th century and plopping him down in the developing American surburbia.

(3) He begins to identify with Whitman: "we'll both be lonely," "dreaming of the lost America of love . . .?"

All the while we readers should be aware that Ginsberg is also writing about his own work as a poet, about his actual writing in his study, with his books at hand. "(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd)."

There is something both sensual and spiritual in this parenthetical remark, buried toward the end of the poem. There is something both celebratory of Whitman's genius and introspective about his (Ginsberg's) own personal efforts. He is both highlighting everyday experience ("our ODYSSEY in the supermarket") and admitting his alienation, seeing his hallucinatory experience as the ordinary people of "blue automobiles in driveways" would undoubtedly see him, and so "feeling absurd."

Ginsberg, of course, is indirectly writing about his own self-consciousness as a outsider in the society in which he lives.

The underlying sensibility throughout the poem is loneliness (the word "lonely" recurs three times and "solitary" twice: "our solitary fancy," "solitary streets"). Whitman is "childless"; their cottage is silent, their America is lost. And, at the end of the poem, Whitman is lost in death. Visionary poets are outsiders in their society, alienated by their sensibility, alone at night.

But -- and this is actually the climax, both for Ginsberg and for Whitman, and of course the reader -- the poet addresses the childless old "graybeard" with this apostrophe: "Ah, dear father . . . ." Separated finally from humankind by the "black waters of Lethe" [forgetfulness], Whitman at last has warm, affectionate offspring.

The old poet is left with the forlorn question: "what America did you have?" But he is also left, quietly, unobtrusively, with this salute: "Ah, dear father . . ."

Answer 2

Although he is certainly popular in many circles I just do not enjoy most of the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Ironically he struggled financially trying to make it as a writer, and didn't become really famous until after his death. I've always found his life story somewhat interesting, but his work doesn't appeal to me .I think the depression he lived with spurred on many of his morbid thoughts and creativity though...