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Please continue to help us support the fight against dementia.Subscribe to our mailing list to get the latest and greatest poetry updates.What's your thoughts? Allen Ginsberg, “A Supermarket in California” from This is not just a poem about Walt Whitman, Ginsberg, or even a supermarket. Ads are what helps us bring you premium content!
The speaker and Whitman are of that other America, not the current one, and their isolation and Subscribe to our mailing list and get new poetry analysis updates straight to your inbox.We respect your privacy and take protecting it seriouslyJamie joined the Poem Analysis team back in November, 2010. A Supermarket in California.
It is here that the speaker is setting up a division between himself and other Americans.
He admits that he feels “absurd” that he’s been touching the poet’s book and dreaming of their odyssey in the grocery store. Join the conversation by commenting
A Supermarket in California. One of the most respected Beat writers and acclaimed American poets of his generation, Allen Ginsberg was born on June 3, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey and raised in nearby Paterson, the son of an English teacher and Russian expatriate. He writes, “Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?” It seems as though the speaker is dreaming of when America was different from what it currently is: it was simpler and less obsessed with possessions. The mid-century countercultural poets who helped define a generation. He asks if they will be walking the streets together, alone and lonely as the rest of the city closes up and goes to sleep. He implores Whitman to tell him where they will be going next. Allen Ginsberg - 1926-1997 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.
The speaker and his muse continue around the store, tasting and handling all sorts of food, yet never coming across a single cashier.
1956. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
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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.Feast on this smorgasbord of poems about eating and cooking, exploring our relationships with food.
A Supermarket in California By Allen Ginsberg About this Poet One of the most respected Beat writers and acclaimed American poets of his generation, Allen Ginsberg was born on June 3, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey and raised in nearby Paterson, the son of an English teacher and Russian expatriate. Allen Ginsberg wrote “A Supermarket in California” while living in Berkeley, California in 1955. The opening line of Ginsberg’s controversial poem ‘Howl’ is often quoted as an example of the tone and content of its epic 112 lines of free verse: ‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked
He has a passion for poetry and enjoys analysing and providing interpretations for poetry from the past and present.this is a very well done explanation of Ginsberg and this poem.