"A Supermarket in California" is a poem by Allen Ginsberg first published in Howl and Other Poems in 1956. The poem describes a narrator's impressions as he walks through a supermarket in California where he finds Federico García Lorca and Walt Whitman 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", being pub...
more
"A Supermarket in California" is a poem by Allen Ginsberg first published in Howl and Other Poems in 1956. The poem describes a narrator's impressions as he walks through a supermarket in California where he finds Federico García Lorca and Walt Whitman 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", being published in 1956, was intended to be a tribute to Whitman in the centennial year of the first edition of Leaves of Grass. The poem is considered to be one of the major works of the Beat Generation, which included other authors of the era such as Jack Kerouac, William Seward Burroughs, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
"A Supermarket in California" is a prose poem with an irregular format that does not adhere to traditional poetic form including stanza and rhyme scheme.
In the opening line, the poet addresses Whitman, or Whitman's spirit as he finds...
less
