poetry

[codylee]

can you help me understand the poem a supermarket in california

[dot.hawkes]

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=107018

[Clanad]

Ginsburg, arriving on the mid-1950�s scene, definitely felt smothered by the up-tightness of that era. Eisenhower was President, television had not yet come of age, racism was a fact of life and quietly acceptable and the country was in a self-satisfied peace time period not experienced since the 1920�s. What I believe to be his self portrait from his signature work, �Howl�, from 1956 I think, includes this stanza, capturing his rage against material values:

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz"�

Of course, one must be aware that he was in the middle of his, how shall I say, �hallucinatory� period, so a lot of any attempted interpretation must consider that aspect.

His railing against the times in which he found himself is encapsulated from this stanza of �Supermarket�:

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�

In my opinion�

[maxi29]

Blimey, hard to sum up in a few words but I thought it was primarily about being gay and the consequent feelings of alienation (there's a lot more than that of course) but that does seem a dominant theme.