I didn't always love poetry. In fact I went through a lot of college with out a poem that I really truly loved. That love came with poetry in 2009 while I was a stay at home mom taking a lit survey class for fun and I first read Allen Ginsburg, "A Supermarket in California". It is the first poem I ever analyzed in college that I wanted to learn about it's structure and the artist behind it. I'm specifically analyzing work from 3 different artists as my inspirations: Audre Lorde who is a feminist writer who I've got quotes on fridge with, Rosario Morales, another amazing feminist author and a personal role model, and than the last is Mr. Ginsburg. I choose him because he inspires me to look at humor, he was my first real love in poetry because he was so intellectual and funny as shit. I studied his life and how he choose to take the humorous rode and call it art so loudly that people actually listened (which is rare for humorists in all genres of respectable writing be it: poems, non-fiction, or fiction). I loved him because I related to his work and I finally felt academia doesn't always have to be stuffy. This essay is an adaptation of one written several years ago.
Allen Ginsburg as an Author in himself is pretty dang cool. He reminds me so much of my mother who died recently. Just old enough to have seen everything and brave enough to be a pioneer in everything. Ginsberg was born just before the depression. His youth was filled with images of the depression, World War II, and the civil rights movement. I found it interesting Ginsburg in himself was a pioneer in the homosexual revolution of San Francisco and the Castro. One of the things I loved the most was that Ginsberg spent his entire life studying and in some cases even working under his favorite writers. It makes sense to me because his works were highly transcendent through poetic genres.
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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, García 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 a 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 automo-
biles 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?
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In my own words the poem is very simple and straight forward. A man is shopping at a grocery store in California late at night. He takes images of the modern day store and relates them to great literary men of the past like Walt Whitman and Garcia-Lorca would think of the modern atmosphere. He pictures himself almost like an erotic lover who strolls alongside of Walt Whitman analyzing with him the atmosphere. He connects the grocery store to larger questions about life, just as his predecessors would have done.
For me this poem is a satirical look on American life. It brings high art to the mundane to life and takes it into a greater level by pairing the mundane with the magical like poetic geniuses. It is sort of a social commentary on what American culture has become. As he bemoans the state we think of the art in society it reveals the art and romance of the everyday mundane.
The format of the poem is lyrical in reading it out. One of the fun things is to hear the original YouTube version of it. The way it flows feels almost musical. Yet visually the poem resembles much more like prose. The lines are particularly long and there is a fluid enjambment between lines giving it a very different auditory feel than a traditional poem. Syntax is also very jumbled. He has a unique parenthetical statement, which gives the poem a sensual feel that might otherwise not have been noticed through the lines. There are also a few moments where the line is continued into a drift through the use of dashes. Both of these aspects lead to a really great feel of a more lyrical movement.
The poem is done in first person. It is very reminiscent of Keats poems about nature. The way Ginsburg communicates with his muses of the past in a very intimate sort of way. It reminds me a lot of the Woody Allen movie “Midnight in Paris” where Owen Wilson is a modern day writer who is conversing with some of the great artists of the past.
What he also achieves through this conversation is a connection with his modern day audience. Rather than just referring to past artists there are specific moments where he feels to me as if he is directly talking to me as well. In statements like: “Will we walk all night through solitary streets?” At first I felt he was talking primarily about walking with Walt but through further reading I felt connected. As if he was asking me to be his companion through the night.
I love this poem. I lived and worked in Los Angeles and in Las Vegas NV for several years. I think it is a neat way to look at the mundane. Supermarkets are not the usual muses for art. Yet he makes it so real. There is also a bit of satirical humor that makes this thing just really come to life. Anytime I’m asked to do a project on a poem this is always the one I choose. I know Ginsburg didn’t like girls but boy I have a crush on his writing!
