"A Supermarket in California" is a poem by Allen Ginsberg, one of the foremost poets of mid-20th century America. The poem's speaker—generally read as Ginsberg himself—enters the garish, brightly-lit supermarket and has a vision of Walt Whitman, a 19th-century American poet, whose work he has been reading. Whitman, for his part, acts almost like an alien placed on Earth from outer space; the supermarket environment doesn't make sense to his 19th-century perspective. The speaker imagines playfully tasting the produce and not paying for any of it, before asking more searching and philosophical questions of his poet guide. He wonders whether America has grown too preoccupied with consumerism and a money-orientated way, and in doing so if the country has lost its way and its capacity to love. The poem ends with an image of Whitman in the underworld, suggesting that Whitman's idealistic and romantic vision of America is probably already dead.
Tonight I've been thinking about you, Walt Whitman. I walked down the tree-lined and moonlit street, feeling self-conscious. In my strange state of longing and exhaustion, I went to the brightly-lit supermarket as much for the visual stimuli as for the food. All the while, I was thinking about your poetry, Walt Whitman. The aisles of the supermarket were full of fruit and shadows. Whole families were shopping—husbands, wives, babies—all moving among the fruits and vegetables. I even saw Federico García Lorca among the watermelons.
I spotted you in the meat section, Walt Whitman, looking like an old childless weirdo. You were looking at the male members of staff and asking questions about the source of the meat, the cost of bananas, and which one of them might have been your angel. I followed you around the store's garish displays of goods, and imagined the suspicious security guard following us. We walked together without a care in the world, trying any and every item we wanted without ever intending to pay.
It's time for us to leave, Walt Whitman, the store closes in an hour—so where are we going go? I suddenly feel embarrassed about this ridiculous daydreaming about our epic supermarket journey. Are we going to walk together through the empty night? The trees make the night even darker and there are no lights on in the houses, so we'll feel quite alone. Will we imagine a better America as we pass identical cars and houses on our way to our silent little home? Oh wise poet, what was America like when you died—when Charon the boatman delivered you to the land of the dead?
The poem rejects American consumerism—a way of life that places great importance on buying and owning things, on being a customer with money to spend and endless options to choose from. Feeling that he doesn’t fit in with a world of shiny shopping aisles and identical houses and cars, the speaker (generally treated as Ginsberg himself) finds kinship in the figure of Walt Whitman—one of the founding figures in American poetry. Through his vision of Whitman, the speaker senses an alternative America. And though the poem never defines this alternative vision for the country outright, it mourns the “lost America of love”—what the nation once was, or could have become.
The poem takes place in the heart of consumerist culture—in the belly of the beast. California is closely associated with an idea of the American Dream that equates money and happiness: the home of Hollywood and the rich and famous, a place where lives are ostensibly filled with sunshine and joy. The supermarket brimming with food reflects this sense of carefree abundance.
And yet, the poem also implies that none of this is real, that the supposed freedom offered by this way of life is as fake as the movies pumped out by Hollywood. The fruit is "neon," so bright as to seem garish, and the speaker shops for "images" rather than actual nourishment to satiate his "hungry fatigue."
Nevertheless, the poem establishes the extent to which this way of life has a hold on people. “Whole families” parade down the supermarket aisles as if in some kind of trance —“wives” are “in” the “avocados,” and there are “babies in the tomatoes.” In other words, they are totally immersed in the consumerist way of life that the supermarket represents.
This way of life robs them of their individual humanity, the poem implies, reducing people to the things they buy and instilling a sense of conformity but making people think they all want the same things. This idea is later echoed by the image of "blue automobiles in driveways," which implies a cookie-cutter vision of success. People think they'll be happy if only they can buy this car or have that house, but the speaker doesn't buy in, and that’s why he conjures up a vision of Walt Whitman.
For poets of Ginsberg’s generation, Whitman stood for a kind of celebration of the common man, the nobility of labor, and people’s individuality. Whitman’s poetry reflects an idealistic romanticism, which he viewed as inseparable from America itself. Whitman becomes something like the speaker’s guide, which the speaker at one point explicitly asking Whitman which "way" to go.
Placing Whitman in this capitalist and commercial wonderland—the supermarket—deliberately clashes these two different Americas together in order to highlight the country's failure to live up to Whitman's ideal. Indeed, the speaker imagines this man from another era trying to make sense of the abundant variety of products, interrogating them and his strange, overwhelming environment. In initially presenting Whitman as lost and confused himself, the poem suggests how far removed modern society has become from the way of life that Whitman imagined.
The speaker then imagines himself and Whitman strolling through the aisles, tasting "fancy" food at their whim without paying for any of it. The speaker and Whitman—in the speaker’s minds—thus share in common a rejection of the importance of money, rebelling against what society tells them to do.
In the end, though, the poem suggests that the optimism expressed in Whitman’s poetry has failed to become reality and probably never will—indeed, it probably never existed in the first place. Now, time is running out—the "doors close in an hour"—suggesting that it's too late to change what America has become. That’s why both Whitman and the speaker ultimately cut such "lonely" figures. The poem then concludes by intensifying its sense of futility and isolation: Whitman is pictured alone on the shores of the underworld, the speaker walking home from the supermarket—and neither of them in the America they desire.
“A Supermarket in California” is a poem bursting with a love of literature. Indeed, the poem is a great example of what is known as metapoetry—poetry that is, in part, about poetry itself. The speaker has a vision in the supermarket of Walt Whitman, one of the great forefathers of American poetry, who then becomes something like a guardian angel figure—a guiding light (or beard in this case!).
In placing poetry front and center, the poem implicitly argues in favor of the value of poetry to society—while also hinting that society has forgotten how to recognize that importance (having been blinded by the supermarket’s neon lights). Arguably, literature’s place in the poem also stands-in for creativity and the imagination more generally, similarly implying that these have become overlooked in modern America.
The poem clearly marks out Whitman and the speaker as kindred spirits. In fact, they even briefly enjoy what the supermarket has to offer, tasting its "delicac[ies]" without intending to pay for them and thus positioning themselves as on the outside of social norms. In other words—in the speaker's mind at least—artists challenge the accepted constructs and norms of the day.
The reference to Lorca also supports this idea. Federico García Lorca was a Spanish playwright and poet who was murdered by his government in 1936. This was in part because of his homosexuality, and in part because, with his leftist sympathies, he presented an idealistic threat to the Fascist, Nationalist forces ruling Spain at the time. He was thus another counter-culture artistic figure whose mere existence challenged the societal status quo.
Though the poem doesn't delve deeply into the specifics of Whitman's poetry, it does show him investigating the 20th-century America that he suddenly finds himself in. His pointed questions in the second stanza subtly suggests how society has lost its way: through mass, thoughtless consumption (the "pork chops" far removed from their butcher), intense globalization (the reference to bananas, which would have to be imported), and the spiritual malnourishment ("Are you my Angel?"). Ultimately, these are similar to the questions the speaker asks in the poem's closing lines—is the "America of love" already "lost," and where is society "going?"
The poem concludes by with another link across literary generations, travelling an even greater span of time. Here, the speaker references the classical underworld, in which Charon, a boatman, transports newly-dead souls to the underworld. The poem mentions Lethe, the waters of which make the people who drink them forget everything. Ending on this doubtful note suggests that society has forgotten something fundamental—and that it is the artist's role to say so, no matter what culture or era they live in.
In reflecting how poets observe and critique America, the poem elevates the cultural importance of art. That is, poets and other artists are in invaluable part of society, the poem implies, because they analyze, question, and imagine alternatives to the dominant way of life.
The poem critiques not just the consumerism it sees as endemic to modern society, but also this society's subsequent insistence on conformity. These two ideas are connected in the poem: society tells people that buying things will bring them happiness, and then teaches people to want to buy all the same things—the same "blue automobiles" and "fancy" artichokes.
The poem critiques the insistence on one uniform image of success and happiness, implying that, in such an environment, people themselves become products—yet more things to buy and sell. That's why there are "Aisles full of husbands," for instance; husbands, "Wives," and "babies" are more things to be desired in order to project the image of a perfect American life.
The poem ultimately suggests that capitalist consumerist society pressures people to stick to one image of success and happiness, and then persecutes those who refuse to conform. And one major example of this in the poem can be seen with homosexuality.
Homosexuality is a subtle but important part in "A Supermarket in California." Allen Ginsberg was gay and Whitman is believed to have been gay or bisexual as well. The Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, depicted as "down by the watermelons" in the first stanza, was also gay—and this was part of the reason he was murdered by Spanish military authorities.
These three men, then, are connected not just by the fact that they are poets, but also by their experiences living during times when homosexuality was still taboo, if not an outright crime. The poem thus suggests that there exists not just a shared cultural and artistic legacy across these generations of men, but also one of secrecy and pain.
As if to acknowledge the secrecy which homosexuality has often had to exist under, the poem doesn't spell this link out too clearly. The closest it gets to a direct reference is in the innuendo in the second stanza, when Whitman "pok[es] among the meats in the refrigerator" and eyes up the grocery boys. The subsequent mention of meat (pork chops) could be in image of carnal desire.
Behind this playfulness, though, lurks a serious point about persecution and nonconformity. When the speaker imagines the "store detective" following him and Whitman, it's not just because they are trying food without paying for it—it's because they're outsiders, in large part due to their sexuality.
The poets are contrasted with nuclear families presented in the first stanza, those "Whole families" made up of husbands, wives, and babies. These represent what a family was supposed to look like at the time—a man, a woman, and their offspring. Again, this moral conformity goes hand-in-hand with the consumerist culture on display in the supermarket—at least that's how the poem presents it.
In other words, the speaker suggests that people have been fed images of what a family is supposed to look like, just as they have been told what products to buy. The poem suggests that this supposedly moral family dynamic is really just another aspect of the shallow consumerist, materialist culture that has taken over America. If this poem, then, is about an alternative America—one less beholden to materialism—then the poem implies that this depends upon the freedom for people to be who they want to be and to love who they want to love.
What thoughts I ...
... of your enumerations!
Before getting started, it should be noted that Ginsberg wrote "A Supermarket in California" as a prose poem without specific line breaks. The poem thus often appears in different layouts depending on font and page size, and so the reader should be aware that any reference to line numbers here is simply to aid with comprehension and understanding.
"A Supermarket in California" opens by immediately establishing the connection between the speaker—generally treated as Ginsberg himself—and the poem's addressee, Walt Whitman. Whitman was one of the most important American poets of the 19th century, a major innovator in both form and subject, and is considered by many to be the father of American poetry. Throughout the poem, the speaker will treat Whitman as a kind of guide, and addresses Whitman through apostrophe. Though the poem is set in a public space—a supermarket—this direct address creates a sense of intimacy between speaker and addressee. This makes the reader into a kind of voyeur of the speaker's innermost thoughts and searching questions.
It's also worth noting that this poet-as-guide figure is a common literary tradition. It's presented somewhat ironically by Ginsberg (in the sense that Whitman, a man who lived in the 1800s, would have no guidance to give the speaker in a 20th-century supermarket!). Still, the role of Whitman as the speaker's guide is similar to the way that Virgil, a poet from the days of ancient Rome, instructs Dante (the foremost Italian poet of the Middle Ages) in the Inferno. It's also worth noting that Whitman himself used long, flowing sentences without strict meter (known as free verse)—an approach mirrored by Ginsberg here.
The poem's first sentence places the reader directly in the speaker's mind with the mention of "thoughts," a "headache," and "self-conscious[ness]." The last of these is important, showing that the speaker is aware of his place—or lack of place—within American society. He can sense that he doesn't fit in, which is in part why he conjures up a more kindred spirit in the form of Walt Whitman.
The opening sentence also focuses on the act of walking, which is how the poem ends too. It's a lonely walk, with the "full moon" suggesting something supernatural or visionary in the atmosphere. In the second sentence, the speaker describes his state as one of "hungry fatigue." He goes to what seems like the right place to fix that: the supermarket. But, of course, this is not just a food-related hunger, but a metaphor for spiritual and intellectual longing as well.
The speaker goes "shopping for images," another metaphor. This suggests the way that society and media (things like television and magazine advertisements) have filled the speaker's mind with the longing for mere "images" rather than actual nourishment; for the appearance of fulfillment rather than actual fulfillment.
The image of "neon fruit" reflects the way that the produce seems too perfect, too shiny, even hyper-real. This represents the superficiality of the supermarket—and the type of so-called freedom that it represents—that is, the supposed freedom offered by consumer choice and spending power; people think they are exercising their freedom when they buy things, the poem implies, when really they are just buying into a system that makes them essentially slaves to money.
The speaker then dreams of Whitman's "enumerations"—his poetry. Whitman's work often cataloged the life he saw around him, especially in New York, in all its vibrancy and variation. There is an implied contrast, then, between the "enumeration"—the counting and cataloging—of the supermarket versus Whitman's poetry. Finally, it's worth noting that the exclamation mark—found throughout the poem—signals an ecstatic state, the speaker overcome by his vision of Whitman.
What peaches and ... by the watermelons?
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Get LitCharts A+ I saw you, ...
... you my Angel?
I wandered in ...
... passing the cashier.
Where are we ...
... and feel absurd.)
Will we walk ...
... our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, ... waters of Lethe?
On two occasions, "A Supermarket in California" plays with sexual innuendo. When the speaker first spots Whitman in the supermarket, he finds him "poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys."
Whitman was either homosexual or bisexual, key common ground between him and Ginsberg. "Poking among the meats" is sexually suggestive of carnal appetite and desire, something which Ginsberg wasn't meant to be too explicit about at the time. Indeed, the collection from which this poem is drawn, Howl and Other Poems, was part of an obscenity trial soon after publication because of its references to sex (and drugs). The poem seems to play with the alleged illicitness of homosexuality, never quite making its sexual references too clear. (Bananas, then, could also be a phallic symbol—but they could just be bananas too!)
The poem then extends this innuendo through the symbolism of the store detective. The speaker imagines himself and Whitman being followed by the guard, partly because they are eating the produce without pay, but likely, and more significantly, also because they are homosexual. The detective represents the official norms of America, a society which attempts to crack down on the supposedly immoral transgressions of those whose desires are simply different.
The supermarket here is more than just a place to buy groceries. It's representative of a whole way of life. Indeed, the supermarket is everything that the speaker wishes America wasn't: a place driven by appearances and the desire to buy, buy, buy.
The bright and garish neon lights indicate a way of life that values looks over substance (an idea picked up on by the pictures of suburban conformity in the third stanza, as well as by the fact that the poem takes place in California—the land of Hollywood make-believe). Perhaps that's what the speaker means by "shopping for images"; the supermarket isn't selling genuine nourishment, but rather products that create the appearance of a wholesome American life.
The fruit is "neon" and the "stacks of cans" are "brilliant," suggesting the shocking beauty of the supermarket, but also its sterility; "neon" fruit doesn't sound like it tastes very good, and food must be highly processed before being placed into those "brilliant" cans. The supermarket is thus a place of abundance yet also a place that seems utterly soulless.
Consumers can buy whatever they want, whenever they want—but their relationship to these products has been totally eroded. That's why Whitman can't get his head around "who killed the pork chops"—because it definitely wasn't anyone who works at the supermarket! The fact that the speaker and Whitman walk by "every frozen delicacy" again suggests a sterility and lifelessness to this food, which has been transformed from simple nourishment into something highly processed.
The supermarket thus also symbolizes how removed people have become from the labor that provides them with all this bounty. Whitman's poetry often lauded the common laborer, so it's fair to say that he and the speaker find this supermarket a gross perversion of the American work ethic. People partake in the spoils of labor, endlessly finding new things to buy, without the fulfillment of hard work.
Nevertheless, the shoppers in the store are caught under the supermarket's spell, the speaker finding them among the packed aisles of produce as if they are indulging in some kind of absurd ancient ritual (in turn highlighting how far removed these people have become from the old ways of life). That the store's "Aisles" are "full of husbands" suggests that men, too, are just items to be bought and sold. The same goes for the "Wives in the avocados" and the "babies in the tomatoes"; in a society driven by money and consumerism, people themselves become products.
As the speaker and Whitman walk home (in the speaker's imagination), they walk through suburban America. Each house they pass seems to tell an identical story, with the same driveway occupied by the same "blue automobile." This symbolizes the of realization of a version of the American Dream, one based on consumerism and which results in stifling conformity.
These cars represent the supposedly good suburban life that people are told to desire. They're owned by the same families who seem so enraptured by the garish glory of the supermarket. The car is supposed to grant its owner freedom—another key concept in the American Dream—but this freedom really amounts to something the speaker sees as the opposite: a kind of mental prison.
These cars, then, come to represent the delusions of a society enthralled by consumer power and choice. These people think that they have freedom, yet they are all taught to want the same thing: the same house, the same nuclear family, the same car. Of course, the blue color can also be interpreted as a symbol of the general sadness the speaker feels while observing a society that appears to have lost its way.
Alliteration is used throughout "A Supermarket in California." It begins in the first sentence, linking Walt Whitman's name—which is in itself alliterative—with "walked." As Whitman is functioning as a kind of spiritual guide for the speaker here, it follows that he should be linked with the act of walking—the wandering that creates space for the speaker's reflections.
The poem returns to this idea in the third and final stanza, linking Whitman's name with "where," "we," "which way," and "will we walk" (from line 8 to line 10). This makes the link even stronger between Whitman and moral authority, summed up in the speaker's asking for the "way" to go. It's worth noting that when Whitman is in the supermarket—an environment that seems to baffle him—his name doesn't alliterate with any other words, conveying how alien this world seems to him (in the speaker's imagination).
The third part of the first stanza also uses alliteration. Firstly, it evokes the abundance of choice to be found in the supermarket:
What peaches and what penumbras!
This almost sounds like an advertising slogan, or the kind of thing that might be put on the side of a product to boost its sales. "Penumbras," however, are not something you can buy in a supermarket—they are shadows. So the alliteration is also linking the bright "neon fruit" with a kind of moral and intellectual darkness too. The alliteration of "what were ... watermelons" and "doing down" in the Lorca section of the first stanza adds a touch of absurdity to the speaker's vision.
In the last sentence of the second stanza (line 7 beginning "We strode ..."), the speaker walks with Whitman and samples the various culinary delights of the supermarket:
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
This alliteration plays with the same idea established by the alliteration go "peaches" and "penumbras" earlier. It suggests the abundance and variety on display in the supermarket, while also conveying the playful naughtiness of two men enjoying produce without any intention of paying for it.
The other key instance of alliteration is in the middle of the third stanza (line 11 starting "will we stroll ..."):
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
This links loss with love, making it clear what's lacking from 20th-century America according to the speaker. The poem doesn't explore what kind of love society would have to value in order to find this ideal America, but it's certainly not the mundane conformism of the hoards of shopping families.
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Walt Whitman (1819-1892) is one of the most important poets in American literary history, often described as the father of American poetry. The whole poem is addressed to him.
"A Supermarket in California" is a prose poem, which is a piece of poetic writing that doesn't use line breaks. This guide uses line numbers to help with clarity and comprehension, but really there aren't really lines here in the usual poetic sense.
The poem is divided into three stanzas, and each is longer than the last. This builds a sense of momentum, but also perhaps says something about the consumerist society in which the poem is embedded. That is, the increasing size of each stanza perhaps speaks to the consumerist desire to accumulate possessions—to own more and more things.
The poem also plays with two formal literary conventions. Firstly, the poem is a journey, which is well-established literary archetype. Think of Homer's The Odyssey, or Dante's Inferno—these classic works are completely framed around a voyage of some sort. Ginsberg subverts this archetype ironically and playfully—his speaker doesn't really go anywhere or have any real adventure apart from in the mind, but he's on an "odyssey" nevertheless. Indeed, perhaps the poem is making the point that this kind of journey isn't even really possible in consumerist America.
The other convention is tied in with the above. The poet guide—in which one older poet guides another through some difficult poetic task—is another well-established archetype. In Dante's Inferno, for example, Dante is led by the ancient Roman poet, Virgil. In this poem, Ginbserg is led by Whitman. One important thing to note is that while Virgil confidently knows his way around the underworld, Whitman is more of an alien figure here—that is, he too is puzzled by the mid-20th century America represented by the supermarket.
"A Supermarket in California" does not use a metrical scheme. Instead, it is written in what is known as free verse—which simply means the absence of strict meter. This fits with the speaker's state of mind—he's in deep with his philosophical wondering, a dream-like state. The flowing unpredictability of the free verse lines gives the poem a searching, longing kind of sound—as though the words want to settle, but can't (indeed, that's why there are so many questions).
It's also worth noting that the long, unfurling free verse lines deliberately echo the style of Walt Whitman—Ginsberg's and the poem's hero. Whitman rejected meter and rhyme, feeling them to be unnecessary constraints for the kind of vibrant, pulsating poetry that he wanted to write. Check out "I Sing the Body Electric" to see a similar kind of poetic line, combined with a similar use of rhetorical questioning.
There isn't any rhyme in "A Supermarket in California," and the same is true of much of Ginsberg's poetry (some of his early work was more formal, in the style of another poetic hero, William Blake). It's worth noting that rhyme would probably feel inappropriate, perhaps too similar to the kind of advertising slogans that might be found in the supermarket—or too organised for such a searching, philosophical tone.
Most critical discussion of this poem treats the speaker as Allen Ginsberg himself. That's because there is a lot in the poem that chimes with Ginsberg's biography, and also because the other poems from the same collection—Howl and Other Poems—are written in an autobiographical style.
Either way, this speaker is deeply engaged with 20th-century America. That doesn't mean to say that he approves of it—quite the opposite—but what "America" means and "where" it is "going" are questions that preoccupy his mind. The speaker wanders through his world, wondering if another world is possible. In part, his vision for a different America is made possible by his engagement with poetry. That's why Whitman, a poet who espoused a vibrant and idealistic vision of what America could be, is the speaker's poet-guide—his wise mentor for issues spiritual, moral, and intellectual. (In the second stanza, Whitman himself speaks three questions.)
The speaker feels that he is an outcast—that he is fundamentally different from the typical families doing their shopping the supermarket. He senses that he has an alternative set of values to them, ones defined not by consumerism and material status, but by "love," poetry, and a more spiritual kind of freedom. Ultimately, though, the speaker is lost. He doesn't know the way, literally or metaphorically, and senses that his longing for an alternative America may just be an "absurd" fantasy. Indeed, everyone else in the supermarket just sees some weirdo lost in thought.
As the title suggests, this poem is mostly set in a Californian supermarket—it was written in Berkeley, California. California, of course, is the land of sunshine and surfing, the place the rich and famous live, where even a young man or woman from the middle of nowhere might make it big as a movie star. It's thus the perfect setting for Ginsberg's poem, because it in many ways reflects the consumerist and materialist ideas he seeks to reject—an obsession with wealth and appearances, often at the expense of more meaningful work and connection. That it's the home of Hollywood adds heft to the mention of "images" in the poem too, suggesting that the speaker is searching for the "images" of success and happiness fed to him by the media rather than interrogating these things for himself.
The specificity of tyhe supermarket matters too. In Ginsberg's poem, the supermarket is both mundane and profound. On the one hand, it's just where people go to shop for groceries—a pretty dull task that most people have to do most days. On the other, the supermarket environment seems to say so much about 20th-century America. It offers a limited type of freedom—the freedom of consumer choice—that is linked to the capitalist economic model. In order to make money, the supermarket competes with other shops—and accordingly it becomes advantageous to be the biggest, brightest store with the most bargains. At first, the speaker is taken aback by the sheer sensory overload of the supermarket environment, which is packed full of both produce and people—and offers fruits from far-flung locations.
But there is a flip-side to the garish, gaudy brightness of the supermarket, a kind of shadow world (a "penumbra"). The speaker's walk also takes place outside, where everything feels unspeakably lonely. The speaker strolls through dark suburban streets, sensing his outsider status (which he feels he shares with Lorca and Whitman), seeing an America in which everything conforms to a very limited notion of what's important. All the homes seem the same, with identical "blue automobiles," and people sleeping in anticipation of their jobs the next day. Through this aspect of the setting, the poem is asking whether this America really embodies the American dream—or if that dream is more of a waking nightmare.
A final shift in the setting occurs in the final sentence. Here, the speaker imagines Whitman in the underworld. Whitman is delivered there by the underworld's boatman, Charon, and the sense that this is a delivery chimes playfully with the earlier supermarket scenes. Whitman seems distinctly alone, standing by the river of Lethe. The waters of Lethe make the drinker lose their mind and forget everything—perhaps suggesting that Whitman's vision for an America based on freedom and love has already been forgotten.
"A Supermarket in California" was written in Berkeley, California in 1955 and was published in Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems (1956). This collection is considered to be one of the key works of the Beat Generation, an American literary movement in the post-war era that included writers like Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Gary Snyder, and Lucien Carr.
The Beats were critical of America's spiritual, intellectual, and moral direction, and experimented with sexual freedom, psychedelic drugs, and alternative ways of life. This, of course, set them up as outcasts from typical American society—represented in this poem by the shopping families with their identical "blue automobiles."
The name—"Beat"—represents the generation's initial economic exile (because living outside of society meant having little money) and beatitude—a kind of divine inspiration. Ginsberg here claims Whitman as an honorary Beat—he too is "lonely" and preoccupied with spiritual longing ("Are you my angel?"). The title poem from the same collection, "Howl," caused great controversy in America, with accusations of sexual obscenity (it's worth noting Whitman appears in that poem too!).
Whitman, of course, is key to the poem's literary context. In fact, the whole poem is addressed to the 19th-century American poet, who many consider to be one of the founding influences on American poetry (together with Emily Dickinson). Whitman believed in the common man, but not the conformist man on display in the supermarket. His vision of America was one of a community of radically free individuals—people free to be who they wanted to be, and to treat one another with a deep and democratic love of humanity. Take a look at "I Hear America Singing" for an example of this.
All of this seems to sit under the poem's surface, informing the speaker's deep spiritual longing. Whitman's influence is also traceable in the long phrase length and the use of free verse, while his book, Leaves of Grass, is directly alluded to in the third stanza. Indeed, such is the book's importance to the speaker that it lives in his pocket, going wherever he goes!
The poem's literary context extends beyond the Beats and Whitman too. In its deep and philosophical critique of society, this could also be compared to the work of another of Ginsberg's literary heroes, William Blake. Blake's poem, "London," takes aim at the poet's contemporary environment while, similarly to the Ginsberg, its speaker walks through town. And in the use of the prose poem format, in which there are no official line breaks, the poem also echoes the work of the 19th-century French poet, Arthur Rimbaud (on whose work Ginsberg delivered a lecture in 1981). Finally, the poem also references the classical era in its closing lines, placing Whitman in the underworld of Ancient Greek and Roman myth.
"A Supermarket in California" was written in 1955, when the post-war rebuilding of America (and much of Europe) was in full swing. America was the strongest economic and military power in the world, but also in the midst of a tense conflict with the other great superpower, Russia. The dominant Russian political ideology, communism, was seen as a direct threat to the American way of life, capitalism. Put crudely, communism is (supposed to be) the equal distribution of resources throughout society as administered by the government). Capitalism encourages people to acquire their own resources, and have the (so-called) freedom to choose how they spend their money.
With this in mind, what it meant to be American was a hotly debated issue—and people with left-leaning political views were generally demonized as communists and, accordingly, anti-American. Ginsberg and the other Beats certainly fell into this latter category. The Beats, of course, were also deeply interested in what it meant to be American—and that question runs throughout this poem right from the title to the last punctuation mark.
Life was changing in post-war America as society tried to regain some semblance of normality. Increasing industrialization brought an increase in mass production, which in turn meant more people could own the same products—the same "blue automobile" for instance. There was also an uptick in the construction of suburbs, with the housing developer William Levitt playing a key role in designing houses that could be built and replicated cheaply.
Many surburbanites shopped in supermarkets, and, combined with the introduction of television to daily life, many Americans lived very similar lives to one another. The poem's speaker implicitly sees that as failure of collective imagination, a kind of prison constructed by the so-called freedoms of consumerism—customer choice and satisfaction guarantees.
The supermarket model originated in California (though there is some debate about this). Ralph's, an early chain, offered a wide range of produce in one location, facilitated by a large parking lot—especially important given that the automobile was becoming such a key part of daily American life. The supermarket thus elbowed out the old way of shopping, in which the shopper would buy bread from the bakery, meat from the butchers, and so on—a typical of shopping which was much more localized.
As noted in this guides Setting discussion, California was also the home of Hollywood—the place where all those movies and television shows that so captivated the country were made. Ginsberg set his poem in this land of wealth and "images" for a reason.
In the Poet's Own Voice — Ginsberg reads "A Supermarket in California" and offers a short introduction.
Whitman and America — Ginsberg discusses his literary hero with two fellow poets.
Whitman's Life and Poetry — A valuable resource on Ginsberg's literary hero from the Poetry Foundation.
Shopping in 1950s America — Color footage of supermarkets from the time of the poem's composition.
Ginsberg on Rimbaud — Transcript of a lecture by Ginsberg on another key influence, the 19th-century French poet Arthur Rimbaud (who used the prose poem form to great effect).
More Poems and Bio — Further reading of poems by Ginsberg, and useful essays too.