A Supermarket in California

Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California” is a prose poem written in free verse and composed of 12 lines. The speaker of Ginsberg’s poem addresses the poem’s subject directly: “What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman […]” (Line 1), signaling to the reader that the poem is an ode, which is a form of lyric poetry written to or for a specific addressee. While the poem is an ode, the specific literary device used here is known as an apostrophe, which is a direct address to someone living or dead, or a personification of someone. The narrator will later see Whitman in the grocery store, thus underscoring the use of apostrophe in the poem. The second half of the opening line, “I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon,” plunges readers into the freewheeling, stream-of-consciousness style and tone characteristic of Ginsberg and the Beats more generally.

While the first line establishes, place, subject, and tone, Line 2 reveals more about the speaker’s motives for taking a night walk, as “shopping for images” refers to seeking inspiration for writing poems. The “neon fruit supermarket” provides an image of a modern grocery store and stands in juxtaposition to the natural light of the full moon mentioned in Line 1. Juxtaposition here is important, as is “dreaming of your enumerations,” which signals back to Whitman and the speaker’s thoughts of the old poet, in turn setting up a contrast between their respective worlds (Line 2). The following lines produce various images, including one of Federico Garcia Lorca (Lines 3-6). Mention of Lorca is significant, as he was one of the most famous Spanish poets of the 20th century who was gay and also wrote an ode to Walt Whitman, thus there is a kinship between the speaker and the two named poets within the poem.

Whitman again makes an appearance—this time physically. He’s now a “childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys” (Line 4), all references to Whitman’s attraction to men. The speaker then imagines Whitman asking the grocery boys a number of questions that further illuminate Whitman’s sexual orientation and also his imagined disorientation within the context of the modern supermarket: “Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?” (Line 5). Lines 6-7 provide a sense of movement within the supermarket and mirror one another, stating more or less the same thing in different ways; however, a notable shift between the two lines takes place when the pronoun changes from “I” in Line 6 to “we” in Line 7. Here the speaker moves from a voyeuristic observation of Whitman at a distance, “I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you,” to a closer union with him, “We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy,” navigating the supermarket together. The following line, “Where are we going, Walt Whitman?” again uses the pronoun “we” while also shifting to the present tense (Line 8). Such moves signal to the reader that the speaker’s vision is progressing and open the poem to larger questions, such as, “Which way does your beard point tonight,” which is a playful way of asking Whitman where to go (Line 8).

Line 9 is the only moment of parentheses within the poem and functions as an aside suggesting action outside the world of the poem: “I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.” This is an intimate and self-conscious moment with the speaker which sets up the following question to Whitman, “Will we walk all night through solitary streets?” (Line 10). Referring to the streets as “solitary” reflects the speaker’s loneliness/isolation, a theme introduced earlier in the poem. Another mention of loneliness, “lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely” (Line 10), is perhaps a reference to the sexual orientation of both the speaker and Whitman, which, at the time, would have been less widely accepted within the traditional home/familial context suggested here through the image of darkened “houses.” The loneliness could also refer to their lot as poets, a profession that many people view as lonely (Lines 9-10). In Line 11, the speaker of the poem again asks Whitman if they will walk together, “dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage.” The “lost America of love” suggests that the speaker sees America as having lost its heart, which after two world wars and in the context of the 1950s would seem to reflect Ginsberg’s own disillusionment with the country. The phrase “home to our silent cottage” is of particular importance here, as this can be read as both a note on being gay and on queer poetry, similar to the sentiment expressed in Line 10.

Ginsberg ends his prose poem with a line loaded in meaning, literary and beyond. The speaker addresses Whitman much more colloquially as “dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,” suggesting just how much of an influence and mentor and, ultimately, how close Whitman is to the speaker (Line 12). This intimate address sets up the speaker’s final question to Whitman: “[W]hat 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?” Charon and Lethe are figures in Greek mythology. Charon was ferryman to the underworld, ushering dead souls from the world of the living to that of the dead. The river Lethe is not the river over which Charon typically ferried souls, which was the Styx, however it was one of the five rivers to Hades known for its power to give amnesia to anyone who drank from it. Specifically, this image is of Whitman, who died in 1892, standing alone on the banks of the underworld looking back as Charon pushes back toward the world of the living. The implied meaning here is that the speaker wants to know more about the America Whitman saw in his lifetime but knows it will be impossible to know, as much of that information would have been lost upon Whitman’s death.

Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California” is not an overt ars poetica, which is a poem about writing poetry, however it does function similarly in its depiction of a poet searching for writing inspiration. Ginsberg uses this scaffolding to expand the poem into greater cultural analysis, using both literary and political lenses (Whitman and the supermarket) as ways to explore the rampant consumerism of postwar America. In the poem, Ginsberg also makes a statement on his sexual orientation. By aligning himself with the famously gay poets Whitman and Lorca, Ginsberg is making a statement on his own orientation and poetry, seeing himself as progeny of these two forefathers.