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20.4.05

“SHOPPING FOR IMAGES” 

Allen Ginsberg, Lorca, Whitman in “A Supermarket in California”.


A Supermarket in California[i]
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?



1.
Allen Ginsberg (1926 – 1997) is probably one of America’s best known poets. His first book of poetry, from which “A Supermarket in California” is taken; “HOWL and other poems” was first published in 1956. It is still in print, now almost fifty years after its initial printing. This is something which speaks volumes about the popularity of this collection of poems and its author. Just as famous as Allen Ginsberg is for his poetry he probably is as one of the central characters of the Beat Generation. “During his long career, he was a cultural phenomenon and a spokesman for a generation, whose influence rivaled that of pop heroes, political and religious leaders.”[ii]

2.
At first glance “A Supermarket in California” looks like a prose poem and reading it through it does feel a bit like one as well. The lines are long, they fill the page and this certainly gives it the look of prose. And when one reads it aloud it gives the sense of a deliberate rhythm that sets it aside from everyday spoken language. It does not, however, owe much to the European prose poem tradition from Charles Baudelaire, but clearly takes much of its inspiration from the great American poet Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892) who also figures in the poem as its focal point. It differs from prose poems also by being divided into four stanzas (or parts at least). The flowing and all encompassing style of “A Supermarket in California” owes much to Whitman’s poetry. Anyone who is familiar with Walt Whitman’s poetry or has leafed through “Leaves of Grass” will spot the similarities.

But Ginsberg and Whitman are not the only poets in the supermarket this evening, even the great Spanish poet Fredrico Garcia Lorca (1898 – 1936) seems to be out shopping for fruit and images. Just as Ginsberg, Lorca seems to be spying on Whitman and it is interesting to note here that Lorca also has written a poem about Whitman; “Ode to Walt Whitman”, published in 1940[iii], and it is probably a safe guess that Ginsberg has read this and other poems by Lorca as well as Walt Whitman’s poetry. Maybe Ginsberg is trying to tell us that his view of Whitman is somewhat different from Lorca’s view? Lorca calls Whitman “lovely old man”[iv], whereas Ginsberg calls him “lonely old grubber”. In the first lines Ginsberg seem to be telling us that there is a connection between his thoughts of Whitman and his headache, something that might reveal mixed emotions – that his view of the old poet is not entirely positive.

If thinking of Whitman is connected to the headache, the dream of enumerations must be so as well. This adds to the conflict between the young and the old poet. If “dreaming of your enumerations” is read as an ironic statement then Ginsberg’s own enumerations in the following might be read as parody. Allen Ginsberg is ridiculing Whitman at the same time as he is taking his inspiration from him. This first stanza has other bits of contrasts as well, as in the sentence: “What peaches and what penumbras!” Delicious fresh fruit is contrasted with an obscure but precise word for the shadows around the fruit, meaning “the total shadow of the moon or earth in eclipse”[v], something that links the fruit with the full moon that also is mentioned in this first stanza. This adds to the feeling that this is a deliberate and well thought out piece of work and that the spontaneous flow is only seemingly so.

The image of Walt Whitman “poking among the meats” is also a bit uncomfortable. He, Whitman, comes across as a homeless and poor man, besides being lonely and out of place. Why he is out of place is, of course, open to questioning but he is a bit out of date in this modern supermarket and most things, like the neon signs and the refrigerators, are new to him. Maybe Ginsberg hints at Whitman being outdated, like meat past its expiry date? At least it is safe to say that, in the context of the poem, Whitman “was” and Ginsberg “is”. But still he is following after and asking the “old grubber” for directions. Looking to the predecessors, like Lorca and Whitman, for inspiration he is out “shopping for images” not only in the real America around him but also in other poet’s visions of America.

Finally he is asking of his “dear father, graybeard” for guidance through the land of the dead, Hades. But like with the obscure wording, mixed emotions and probable irony of this poem, Hades is somewhat askew as well. Charon ferried the dead over the river Styx, while Lethe was the river of forgetfulness. Again we as readers are exposed to a fluctuation of meaning, making us read over and reconsider time and again. There is also an obvious reference her to Walt Whitman’s poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”. A connection that is continued in lines from “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” like: “Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!”[vi]. This is easy to connect with Ginsberg’s “Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!” since it a curious way to describe something very common and domestic in a very normal setting; the supermarket.

3.
But as Ginsberg plays hide-and-seek with Lorca and Whitman among the groceries and with the imagined store detective, this text plays hide-and-seek with its readers. It seems easy and straight forward at first glance, but there are so many deliberate traps here that the reader is bound to stubble. Just as the poets are eying each other in the aisles of the supermarket, the reader must be careful not to take everything at face value. Only through extensive re-reading is it possible to begin to grasp the scope of this poem.

There is probably a multitude of reasons why Ginsberg wrote this particular piece of poetry. Maybe he was just simply thinking of the great poet Whitman while doing everyday things like walking the streets at night and shopping groceries. But also this is from the first book of poetry Ginsberg published and it is a fair chance that he tried to come to terms with him self as a poet by making a stand and placing himself both apart from and among his idols. Another thing to take into consideration is that both Lorca and Whitman where homosexuals, just as Ginsberg. So young Allen Ginsberg needed heroes and role models on that account as well. That is maybe why he calls Whitman “old courage-teacher”?

[i] Ginsberg, Allen: A Supermarket in California. In: The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter Sixth Edition. W. W. Norton & Company 2003, page 2739 – 2740, for this and all following quotations.
[ii] Ro, Sigmund: Literary America. An Introduction to the Literature of the United States. Univeritetsforlaget 1997, page 257
[iii] Lorca, Fredrico Garcia: Dikter i New York. Cappelen 1991, page 121
[iv]Lorca, Fredrico Garcia: Ode to Walt Whitman <http://www.artofeurope.com/lorca/lor1.htm>
[v] Hornby, A. S.: Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. Oxford University Press 1986
[vi] Whitman, Walt: Leaves of Grass, and Selected Prose. Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1965, page 133
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