COMPETI TION BYTES
A Supermarket In California
BY ALLEN GINSBERG
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the side streets under the
trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of
your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives
in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the
watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator
and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my
Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by
the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every
frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point
tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses,
we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our
silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit
poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the
black waters of Lethe?
ABOUT
Ginsberg's poetry tore the roof off American literature. He carried on the tradition of carefree self-
expression that Whitman and American writers Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) and Henry
David Thoreau (1817–62) adopted/supported..
"A Supermarket in California" is a free verse poem that uses long local (nonstandard language or
dialect) language.. Free verse does not stick to traditional metrical conventions, but it is not as
free as its name implies. Also, poets use traditional poetic techniques that allow them to develop
particular feelings, ideas, or auditory effects in their work.
1
A Supermarket In California
BY ALLEN GINSBERG
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the side streets under the
trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of
your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives
in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the
watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator
and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my
Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by
the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every
frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point
tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses,
we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our
silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit
poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the
black waters of Lethe?
ABOUT
Ginsberg's poetry tore the roof off American literature. He carried on the tradition of carefree self-
expression that Whitman and American writers Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) and Henry
David Thoreau (1817–62) adopted/supported..
"A Supermarket in California" is a free verse poem that uses long local (nonstandard language or
dialect) language.. Free verse does not stick to traditional metrical conventions, but it is not as
free as its name implies. Also, poets use traditional poetic techniques that allow them to develop
particular feelings, ideas, or auditory effects in their work.
1
