"A Supermarket in California" is a poem by American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 poet Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

 first published in Howl and Other Poems

Howl and Other Poems

Howl and Other Poems is a collection of poetry by Allen Ginsberg published November 1, 1956. It contains Ginsberg's most famous poem, "Howl", which is considered to be one of the principal works of the Beat Generation as well as "A Supermarket in California", "Transcription of Organ Music",...

in 1956. The poem describes a narrator's impressions as he walks through a supermarket

Supermarket

A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...

 in California where he finds Federico García Lorca

Federico García Lorca

Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads...

 and Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...

 among the patrons. Whitman, who is also discussed in "Howl", is a character common in Ginsberg's poems, and is often referred to as Ginsberg's poetic model. "A Supermarket in California", published in 1956, was intended to be a tribute to Whitman in the centennial year of the first edition of Leaves of Grass

Leaves of Grass

Leaves of Grass is a poetry collection by the American poet Walt Whitman . Though the first edition was published in 1855, Whitman spent his entire life writing Leaves of Grass, revising it in several editions until his death...

.

For its critique of mainstream American culture, the poem is considered to be one of the major works of the Beat Generation

Beat generation

The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...

, which included other authors of the era such as Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac

Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...

, William Seward Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...

, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...

. 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.

The poem

"A Supermarket in California" is a prose poem with an irregular format that does not adhere to traditional poetic form including stanza

Stanza

In poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse"...

 and rhyme scheme

Rhyme scheme

A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyme between lines of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme. In other words, it is the pattern of end rhymes or lines...

. The format is a resemblance of the long-winded aspect of speech. The long-line style is attributed to Whitman and "as with Whitman, by the time we have traversed the stretch of one of these long lines, we have experienced a rapid set of transformations." This is shown within the poem’s location, the metaphorical supermarket and its symbolism of Ginsberg’s America. The form of Ginsberg's poem comes from "his knowledge of Walt Whitman's long-line style" which was an experiment for Ginsberg before he adapted it to all his works later on.

In the opening line, the poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 addresses Whitman, or Whitman's spirit as he finds himself "shopping for images", which Douglas Allen Burns suggests puts a capitalist spin on the situation described in the poem. The narrator sees families of consumers shopping in the market alongside the figures of deceased poets Lorca and Whitman, both of whom were homosexual poets like Ginsberg himself. The poet notes the sexuality of Whitman as he describes the character as a "childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys". Bill Morgan also writes that Ginsberg always saw Whitman as a kindred spirit in regards to their similar sexualities, seeing "a self-imposed repression of his innate queerness," which is evident in the poem through its idolization of Whitman. Betsy Erkkila, in Whitman the Political Poet, suggests that Ginsberg brings Whitman into the poem to show the difference between the America

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 described in the works of Whitman and that which exists in 1955 when "A Supermarket in California" is written. In her opinion, "America" is not described as being a physical place but one that exists in the imagination of the poet and can "live and die only with him".

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 Spanish

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 poet and playwright who had died in 1936, yet his spirit appears in the supermarket in 1955 when the poem is written. Lorca's works were often classified as surrealistic

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 and were considered to have homoerotic tones.

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 Charon

Charon (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon is the ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. A coin to pay Charon for passage, usually an obolus or danake, was sometimes placed in or on...

 quit

poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank

and stood watching the boat disappear in the black

waters of Lethe

Lethe

In Greek mythology, Lethe was one of the five rivers of Hades. Also known as the Ameles potamos , the Lethe flowed around the cave of Hypnos and through the Underworld, where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness...

?

In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

, 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.

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 Industrial Revolution

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...

 and Darwinism

Darwinism

Darwinism is a set of movements and concepts related to ideas of transmutation of species or of evolution, including some ideas with no connection to the work of Charles Darwin....

 and Freud and two world wars, mustard gas, and the hydrogen bomb, the advent of the technological era, Vietnam, and IBM." To Marshall, the poem is meant to show the change from 19th century optimism

Optimism

The Oxford English Dictionary defines optimism as having "hopefulness and confidence about the future or successful outcome of something; a tendency to take a favourable or hopeful view." The word is originally derived from the Latin optimum, meaning "best." Being optimistic, in the typical sense...

 to the "ennui" portrayed in Ginsberg's poems. Marshall's notion about Ginsberg's portrayal of the evolution of society is shown within the lines, "I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas?" In Whitman's day, he would have known the answer to those questions because back then, one would go to the farmer directly to get the products unlike the modern American supermarkets where one does not know where the products come from.

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." Burns adds that the use of Lorca and Whitman is intended to show the counter-cultural aspects of Ginsberg's art. The poetry of Lorca and Whitman, to Burns, express a value system that contradicts everything the modern supermarket represents. Whereas "love" is what America represents in the works of previous poets, the America of Ginsberg's poetry is best presented through poetical references to "supermarkets and automobiles".

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.