Help me please!!! Poetry?

Question

can someone help me to understand what this poem means? what are the figures of speach in there and what is the poem trying to say? I just don't know.

A Supermarket in California

By Allen Ginsberg (316)

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked
down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious
looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the
neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras*? Whose families shopping at
night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocadoes, babies in the
tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca,* what were you doing down by
the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking
Among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops?
What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you,
and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy
tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing
the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour.
Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the super-market
and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade
to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue
automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what
America did you have when Charon* quit poling his ferry and you got
out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the
black waters of Lethe?*

Answer 1

The poem has to do with the US: the differences between Whitman's US and Ginsberg's US. The implicit question is: what would Whitman have thought of America now? (think of mass consumerism, for instance).
It also has to do with poetry, and the practice of poetry (many references to poetry, like "odyssey"): brotherhood of poets: Ginsberg / Whitman / Garcia Lorca. Garcia Lorca wrote an "Ode to Walt Whitman". The way poetry has changed because the US has changed.
Finally: there is probably something about homosexuality as well: three homosexual poets.
Also look at the mythological references and how Ginsberg tries to create a new mythology.
Figures of speech: you have to do this type of work yourself. Look at the form of the poem, and then analyze the images ("hungry fatigue", "Are you my Angel") the way AG addresses Whitman ("I saw you, WW, ...").
It is a very rich poem, and you can enjoy it if you take the time to go through it, read it carefully, analyze it. And it is not very difficult once you have elucidated the references.

Answer 2

Well, first look up Walt Whitman and all the starred references on Wiki or some other good resource. Then you might "get" the poem a little better.

Also, there are some nice plays on Fruit there. There's a very famous poem called the Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot -- which is quite long and boring in some parts, but he's got this lovely, lovely line in there about how he's dressed up in his summer clothes and looking at young girls, and he wonders, "Do I dare to eat a peach?" Which means, do I dare get my clothes messy with peach juice? Do I dare get my life messy by falling in love with young women?

I think the peaches in the supermarket have something to do with that.

Walt Whitman is another famous American poet, so Ginsberg is really riffing off all these poets who came before him.

Answer 3

Ginsberg was the Whitman of his day. In that, I mean both were considered very unique and very rebellious. Whitman was very optimistic about the future of America. Thirty years later, Ginsberg comes along, reads Whitman's writing, and finds it lacking. The America Whitman envisioned was nothing like Ginsberg's America. In the poem, Ginsberg is blaming Whitman for the outcome of American civilization. He wants to know why America didn't turn out the way Whitman had imagined. The imagery of Charon and the Lethe confirm that America has, for the lack of a better phrase, gone to hell in Ginsberg's eyes.

Answer 4

Here are some tools to understand intimidatingly good poets:
- check on the references... Charon is an easy one... then he names other famous poets (Garcia Lorca, Whiltman...)
- look at metaphors. That is, the vocabulary. He's obviously "walking through" pages of other literature... talking about taste, and running with it. Look at what vocabulary goes as a "family": supermarket, frozen, stacks of cans, etc. Group them. What do they have in common? What do they talk about? Literally? Could they be talking about something else than their literal meaning?

Hope that helps...

Answer 5

I love it. This is the final sentence from Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds which first showed me what poetry is capable of (it's a little long): they are like great runners: they know they are alone with the road surface, the cold, the wind, the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio- vascular health—just factors, like the partner in the bed, and not the truth, which is the single body alone in the universe against its own best time. Edit: and yes as Cheese Whisperer says I may not be following directions...it's close though.

Answer 6

did you just copy a whole peotry book

Answer 7

do your own homework