Who Is Allen Ginsberg's A Supermarket In California
Initially while reading “A Supermarket in California” by Allen Ginsberg I couldn’t fully comprehend what it was I was reading at first. My first impression of the poem was something along the lines of, “This man sure knows how to fill up paragraphs with tons of meaningless nonsense that may as well be replaced with a huge ‘NOTHING’ written in its place.” But then I re-read the poem and truly tried to understand what it was he was saying, who were the people he kept bringing up? Why is he talking about food the way he is? The key to understanding this is to know who exactly Whit Whiteman is and what influence he had on Ginsberg, especially because he seems obsessed with him in this poem.
Some research yielded that Whitman was an amazing poet
of the 1800’s, claimed to be Americas first poet! He wrote many different poems, but three main themes that he was fascinated with were nature, spirituality, and freedom of sexuality (The latter resulting in poem named “Leaves of Green” which was deemed sexually explicit for its time). Thinking about this rationally, because of how Whitman was so fascinated with nature and spirituality, he surely must’ve wondered about our place in the world, about where we came from and perhaps even wondering about where we fit in this trillion-piece puzzle known as planet earth. Now, if that is the type of person that Ginsberg is so captivated by, there must be some connection, and it was then that I began to understand what Ginsberg was trying to convey through his writing. This poem wasn’t simply about fruit, nor was it just incoherent ramblings, he was showing his divided feels of the current state of industrialized America and Whitman’s views of the world, which involved being in touch with nature.
As soon as we know this we can assume that Ginsberg is thinking of these things while thinking of Walt Whitman as he walks “down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the moon.” This line alone tells us that Ginsberg is feeling torn between the industrial style life of the world and the trees and moon, which reminds him of how Whitman wanted to find the true nature of the world (which makes me see him as a type of philosopher.).
Some research yielded that Whitman was an amazing poet
of the 1800’s, claimed to be Americas first poet! He wrote many different poems, but three main themes that he was fascinated with were nature, spirituality, and freedom of sexuality (The latter resulting in poem named “Leaves of Green” which was deemed sexually explicit for its time). Thinking about this rationally, because of how Whitman was so fascinated with nature and spirituality, he surely must’ve wondered about our place in the world, about where we came from and perhaps even wondering about where we fit in this trillion-piece puzzle known as planet earth. Now, if that is the type of person that Ginsberg is so captivated by, there must be some connection, and it was then that I began to understand what Ginsberg was trying to convey through his writing. This poem wasn’t simply about fruit, nor was it just incoherent ramblings, he was showing his divided feels of the current state of industrialized America and Whitman’s views of the world, which involved being in touch with nature.
As soon as we know this we can assume that Ginsberg is thinking of these things while thinking of Walt Whitman as he walks “down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the moon.” This line alone tells us that Ginsberg is feeling torn between the industrial style life of the world and the trees and moon, which reminds him of how Whitman wanted to find the true nature of the world (which makes me see him as a type of philosopher.).