A Supermarket in California PDF

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A Supermarket in California By Allen Ginsberg

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! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, 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 supermarket 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? Summary: The speaker in 'A Supermarket in California’ is addressing American poet Walt Whitman, who died in 1892 but influenced numerous writers centuries later. The speaker informs Whitman that when strolling beneath the full moon, he thought of him, and the speaker stumbles inside a supermarket, hungry and fatigued. The speaker then goes on to describe the folks he meets there, claiming to have spotted Whitman in the aisles, browsing around the various food options. The speaker concludes the poem by wondering if he and Whitman will go for a stroll and fantasize about the past and "the vanished America." Structure and form: the poem ‘A Supermarket in California' has a superior air to it, and with its numerous references, Ginsberg presumes his readers have some prior knowledge of poetry, world history, and mythology. Ginsberg divides his poem into three stanzas, and his lines are unrhymed and written in free verse. Ginsberg seems unconcerned with structure since his stanzas and lines vary in length. Literary Devices: Allen Ginsberg's poem 'A Supermarket in California' is written in the prose style. The extended phrase isn't a characteristic of traditional poetry. Its structure, as well as the literary

methods utilized in the poem, reflect its contemporary nature. An apostrophe appears in the poem's opening line. In the poem, the poet employs a lot of enjambment. The poet employs a personal metaphor in the term "hungry fatigue” (§ line 2). The poet alludes to Walt Whitman's writings by utilizing the word "enumerations" (metonymy, § line 3). The properties of "avocados" and "tomatoes" are associated by the poet with "women" and "babies," respectively (synecdoche, § line 6) Another apostrophe is used by the poet to conjure Garcia Lorca's spirit. In the line "Solitary fantasy" (§ line 14) the poet employs yet another intimate metaphor. The usage of Homer's Odyssey in the poem (§ line 9) is a reference to Whitman's magnum work. To bring in the antique tone at the end of the poem, the author references to "Charon" and "Lethe" in the last two lines. Analysis stanza by stanza: Stanza 1: Ginsberg opens "A Supermarket in California" by describing a vision he experienced one night while living in Berkeley, California. He begins by setting the scene: he is strolling down a street, beneath the shade of trees and under the light of a full moon, thinking about Walt Whitman. The environment is crucial for Ginsberg in this scene. He is torn between two sides of existence, one portrayed by Berkeley and the Bay Area's metropolitan landscape, and the other by the natural world indicated by trees and the moon. These motifs remind him of Walt Whitman, who looked to nature for a more authentic world and identity. With a "headache" (§ line 2) and a "hungry fatigue" that is both bodily and spiritual, Ginsberg seeks relief from the existential dilemma he is experiencing by wandering into a "neon / fruit supermarket" (§ line 4-5). He's "dreaming" of Whitman's "enumerations," (§ line 4) which means he wants to see a glimpse of the universe Whitman described in his poems at the supermarket. Ginsberg is turning to history for answers to the economic and social problems that his current environment has thrown him. The term "neon," (§ line 3) which refers to a glaring artificial light, foreshadows Ginsberg's ultimate disappointment. Ginsberg goes the supermarket in search of beauty among the shop's natural items. His goal is that he would be able to see beyond current society's commercialization. Ginsberg's amazement and skepticism at what he sees there is captured in line 5, § "What peaches and what penumbras!" The penumbras, ("shroud" or "partial light,") are designed to represent the mysteries that such natural and domestic displays conceal. The "Whole families shopping at / night!" (§ line 5) allusion to the darkness of industrialized society, which requires the image of the perfect nuclear family, hides these secrets. The poem's opening stanza finishes with line 8, which is a short salute to another Whitman admirer, Garcia Lorca. Stanza 2: Ginsberg's mental contact with Walt Whitman begins in the second verse. "I saw you, Walt Whitman...poking / amid the meats...and eyeing the grocery boys," Ginsberg alleges (§ lines 9-10). "Poking among the meats" is a coarse euphemism for male intercourse, and "eyeing the grocery boys" is a recognition of Whitman's reported sexual affinity for young boys, according to Ginsberg. In lines 11 and 12, Ginsberg continues the sexual imagery by claiming that Whitman inquired "Who killed the pork chops? / What price bananas?" "Are you my Angel?" These lines make use of supermarket imagery to represent a primitive sort of sexuality that is based in nature but tainted by industrialized society's business motivation. They do, however, raise economic concerns. It would have been normal for a food consumer in Whitman's day to want to know where their food came from, who killed it, and how it got to their table. Whitman's query would not be able to be addressed by the store's owners or staff, which is left unsaid but inferred. When Ginsberg asks if

Whitman is his "Angel," he may be referring to Walter Benjamin's essay, The Angel of History, a Marxist philosophical tract that projected that modernity would lead to nothing less than the abolition of civilization. Whitman had a similar vision of a civilization cut off from nature and mankind losing its uniqueness. But Ginsberg isn't only writing about the social calamity he encounters at the store. Whitman provides him with a picture of a different sort of existence because he is able to see beauty in the midst of a sea of consumerism. Ginsberg observes Whitman “tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the / cashier” (§ lines 16-17) as he walks "in and out of the dazzling stacks of cans" (§ line 13). Whitman is the only character in the poem who is able to avoid the supermarket's profit and payment demands. Instead, he may enjoy the food, which is a representation of the natural world, without having to pay for it. Stanza 3: Ginsberg seems less enthusiastic about the world he now lives in in the poem's concluding verse. He questions Whitman: “Where are we going... The doors close in an hour” (§ line 18). This is a subliminal admission that the vision he's seeing isn't going to last. Whitman's adoration of nature cannot stand up to the demands of capitalist modernity, in which everything is for sale and has a price. Ginsberg acknowledges that having such an optimistic view of discovering the esthetic beauty in grocery things makes him feel "absurd" (§ lines 20-21). Ginsberg is well aware that he and Whitman will never be able to find Whitman's pristine picture of natural society and man. Their journey through the "lonely streets," past icons of a "lost America" like vehicles and gloomy houses, would only bring them loneliness (22-25). Ginsberg compares America to the legendary Hades towards the end of the poem. "When Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out... / and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of / Lethe?" he asked Whitman. (27-29). Charon was Hades' protector, ferrying souls across the River Styx to eternal life. But, as Ginsberg points out, Whitman never quite made it to Hades. Instead, he found himself stuck on the banks of the River Lethe, which ran through Hades. Those who drank from the river Lethe would become completely forgetful, according to Greek mythology. The meaning of modern society, according to Ginsberg, is that it forgets its past and what is natural. The store peach has no connection to the natural environment from whence it came for people who purchase it. Its history has been lost. This is the situation of the globe as a result of capitalism and modernity. Whitman, who once decried such progress, is now stuck on the bank of an endless river of forgetting. He is now regarded as a forgotten hero....