Two sides to the American 1950s were the picture-perfect picket fence suburban neighborhoods of white families and the modern cynicism that birthed Allen Ginsberg and his friends within the Beatnik generation. These two sides were reflected in two of Ginsberg’s many poems. A Supermarket in America reflects upon the loss of the former. Meanwhile, America dives into the politics that strongly reflect what the Beatnik generation stands in juxtaposition to.
Starting with A Supermarket in America, there’s no doubt this is a walking poem with Allen Ginsberg as our guide. Strolling through the story and strophes, sauntering through the aisles, bring along the audience, American poet Walt Witman, and spots Spanish poet Garcia Lorca checking out the watermelons! Ginsberg knows that as a Jewish homosexual man, he has no place in the families in the suburbs. As one analysis states: “Ginsberg seems to be feeling particularly lonely and isolated from the rest of society…. draws the line between him and the people living in suburban America”(Jenson, Poem Analysis). The little store may as well be a whole nother word to him and his friends, one he has no desire for because he sees the cracks in its foundation.
Utilizing the imagery of “Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!” (Lines 7- 9) These three hyperboles, one after another, portray a sense of controlled chaos, quite quaint in the grand schemes of things, but the little word inside this grocery store is all they need to concern themselves with. But indeed, there aren’t babies in the avocados, right? That’s a health violation if I ever saw one.
In contrast to the quaint imagery of suburban life, Ginsberg’s Poem America has a much harsher tone appropriate for its political subject matter. The poem’s use of amphora shines through via the words “When” and “America” are used in a questioning sense, making each strophe play out an interrogation.
“When will you take off your clothes
When will you look at yourself through the gravel
When will you be worth of you million Trotskyites?”
~ Ginsberg Lines 10-12
Ginsberg shines the harsh fluorescent light into America’s eyes, asking when it will be better. When will America finally live up to its potential? The tone is bleak, the anger and frustration of the interrogator(Ginsberg) bleeding through. Analyst Mark Baker believes this shows Ginsberg’s resentment and desire to bring attention to the death of a democratic society, as Baker explains in his work on Owlcation.
While the tones and imagery are as different as night and day, they both have a sense of foreboding about them that comes with an ending. These two poems are ode to dusk falling on their respective lifestyles. Ginsberg knows darkness goes unnoticed in the supermarket: “What peaches and what penumbras”(Line 7). Peaches symbolize longevity, and penumbras symbolize a shadow of death” that will soon fall on this golden era of life since “the doors close in an hour.”(Line 24). He reiterates the same sense of foreboding through symbols in America, saying, “America, the plum blossoms are falling.”(Line 30) Plum blossoms symbolize perseverance and hope, beauty and purity, values or virtue lost by the effect of the Cold War and its inciting of the Second Red Scare. Both symbols are prime examples of how Ginsberg felt America’s loss on both sides of society.
Dusk is falling on the golden age of upbeat America in the 1950s. In its place, the sixties will rise and bring forth the anti-establishment counter-culture of the 1960s. However, Ginsberg and his friends would not know that (wink). In his form of the present, this poet just wants the days to come to stop looking so bleak for him and his peers.
References
Jenson, Jamie. "A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg". Poem Analysis, https://poemanalysis.com/allen-ginsberg/a-supermarket-in-california/. Accessed 26 September 2023.
Baker, Mark. “Analysis of ‘America’ by Allen Ginsberg - Owlcation.” Owlcation, Owlcation, 12 Mar. 2021, https://owlcation.com/humanities/America-Analysis
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