TalkBack: Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California (1955)

TALKBACK

Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) was born in Newark, New Jersey. As a teenager, he began to read Walt Whitman, who, along with William Carlos Williams (p. 1106) and English and Romantic poet William Blake, exerted an enormous influence on his writing. Ginsberg went to Columbia University on a scholarship to study law but changed his major to English. He became a major voice in the Beat movement, which included poets Gregory Corso and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and novelists William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road (1957). Ginsberg led a varied, unconventional life: he worked as a dishwasher, welder, and university professor; he was arrested several times for participating in political protests; he spent time in a psychiatric institution; and he toured with Bob Dylan’s band. Ginsberg’s work is notable for its free expression and rejection of conformity and materialism. Howl (1955) created intense interest and controversy for both its style and its content. In 1957, the poem’s publisher was charged with obscenity; however, the case was thrown out when the presiding judge ruled that Howl was of “redeeming social consequence.” Ginsberg’s other works include Kaddish and Other Poems (1961), which many regard as his finest collection, and the mixed-genre volume The Fall of America, which won a National Book Award in 1973.

A Supermarket in California

This poem is from Ginsberg’s collection Howl and Other Poems (1956). Written in 1955, it was intended as a celebration of the centennial anniversary of Leaves of Grass. It is considered one of the major expressions of the “Beat Generation.”

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.

5

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.)

10

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?1

(1955)