A Supermarket in California
"A Supermarket in California" is a
For its critique of mainstream American culture, the poem is considered to be one of the major works of the Beat Generation, which included other authors of the era such as Jack Kerouac, William Seward Burroughs, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.[5] Ginsberg achieved critical success in 1956 with the publication of Howl and Other Poems, with "Howl" being the most popular of the works in the collection. Like "Howl", "A Supermarket in California" was a critique of postwar America, yet in the poem the narrator focuses more on consumerist aspects of society by contrasting his generation with Whitman's.[6]
The poem
"A Supermarket in California" is a
In the opening line, the
Ginsberg introduces the character of Lorca in line 7, asking "..and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?". Lorca was a famous
In the final lines of the poem, Ginsberg turns once again to the image of Whitman, asking:
- Ah, dear father, greybeard, lonely old courage-
- teacher, what America did you have when Charonquit
- poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank
- and stood watching the boat disappear in the black
- waters of Lethe?
In Greek mythology, Charon was the ferryman who carried the dead into the underworld, across the river Styx. The River Lethe was a different river in the underworld, which caused those who drank its waters to experience complete forgetfulness. The shades of the dead were required to drink the waters of the Lethe in order to forget their earthly life.
Critical analysis
In Story Line, Ian Marshall suggests that the poem is written to show the differences in American life depicted by Whitman and that which faces Ginsberg in the 1950s: "It's the distance of a century—with Civil War and the 'triumph' of the
Describing the relationship between Ginsberg and Whitman in "Howl" and "A Supermarket in California", Byrne R.S. Fone states that sexuality, specifically homosexuality, plays a key role in the poem's presentation of reality: "Not since Whitman had an American homosexual poet dared to intimate, let alone announce, that joy not pain was the result of homosexual rape and to suggest that sex not philosophy might be the most powerful weapon against oppression.
Critic Nick Selby, in an essay titled "Queer Shoulders to the Wheel: Whitman, Ginsberg, and a Bisexual Poetics", suggests that the poem presents sexuality as one of several opposing forces in the novel. Selby states that the binary opposites of heterosexuality and homosexuality function in the poem in the same manner as other opposites that make up the major themes of the work: capitalism vs. communism, American vs. Unamerican, and counterculture vs. culture. He adds that Ginsberg ironically uses the setting of the supermarket to show how mainstream culture forces conformity upon the consumer, highlighting the "radical sexuality" of the poet and putting it into a broader social context.[17]
Notes
- ^ Bowlby p.196-197
- ^ Pockell p.168
- S2CID 240404607. Retrieved 21 August 2022.
- ^ a b Whitman p. 92
- ^ Brinnin p.149
- ^ a b Burns p.118-119
- ^ Burns p.333
- ^ Morgan p.206
- ^ Burns p. 19
- ^ Ginsberg. p.29
- ^ Morgan p.222
- ^ Erkkila p.189
- ^ a b Marshall p.160
- ^ Ginsberg p.29
- ^ Fone p.706
- ^ Burns p.19
- ^ Selby 1997 pp.126-128
References
- Bowlby, Rachel. Carried Away: The Invention of Modern Shopping. "A Supermarket in California". Columbia University Press 2002
- Pockell, Leslie. The 100 Best Poems of All Time. Warner Books 2001
- Burns, Allan Douglas. Thematic Guide to American Poetry. Greenwood Publishing Group 2002
- Ginsberg, Allen. Howl and Other Poems. "A Supermarket in California". Ed. William Carlos Williams. City Lights Books 2000
- Erkkila, Betsy. Whitman the Political Poet. Oxford University Press US, 1996
- Whitman, Walt. and Ezra Greenspan. Walt Whitman's "Song of myself". Routledge 2005
- Marshall, Ian.Story Line. University of Virginia Press (1998)
- Fone, Byrne R. S. The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature. Columbia University Press 2001
- Brinnin, John Malcolm, Bill Read, Rollie McKenna. The Modern Poets. University of California Press 2007
- Selby, Nick. "Queer Shoulders to the Wheel:Whitman, Ginsberg, and a Bisexual Poetics". The Bisexual Imaginary: Representation, Identity and Desire. Continuum 1997
- Morgan, Bill. "I Celebrate Myself: the somewhat private life of Allen Ginsberg". New York: Penguin Group 2006.
- Burns, Glen. “Great Poets Howl: A Study of Allen‘s Ginsberg‘s Poetry, 1943-1955” New York 1983.