Allen Ginsberg Compared to Other Poets

Whitman in the Supermarket

Considered by many to be the father of free verse, Walt Whitman was a19th century American poet, essayist, and journalist. In his poetry, Whitman often incorporated aspects of realism -- presenting things as they are -- with transcendentalism, which seeks to transcend things as they are.

In Allen Ginsberg's poem, "A Supermarket in California," Ginsberg encounters "Wives in the/avocados, babies in the tomatoes!" And "Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,/poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery/boys" (7-8, 10-12). Whitman was also an open bisexual who never married, never had children, and was one of the first American poets to incorporate homosexual eroticism into his work, though he is most famous for his semi-tragic depiction of American ideals -- just as Ginsberg himself is. In "A Supermarket in California," Ginsberg not only encounters Whitman but actually follows him, which is symbolic of Ginsberg's work following in the Whitman tradition of transcendental realism.

While Ginsberg openly refers to a "lost America of love" in his poem (28), Walt Whitman symbolically refers to a lost America in his own poem, "Cavalry Crossing a Ford." In Cavalry, Whitman depicts a sluggish, seemingly defeated cavalry of horsemen crossing a river ford the American flag:

Behold the brown-faced men -- each group, each person, a picture -- the negligent rest on the saddles;

Some emerge on the opposite bank -- others are just entering the ford -- while,

Scarlet, and blue, and snowy white,

The guidon flags flutter gaily in the wind. (4-8)

That the flag still flies "gaily" over "negligent" riders is indicative of Whitman's love of his country and also his disappointment in his countrymen. The poem is also symbolic of the notion of loss over time -- think of crossing the ford as trudging into the future -- which is a popular theme in American poetry.

W.S. Merwin's "For the Anniversary of my Death" is yet another example of this theme. Rather than address the loss of America as a whole, however, Merwin makes it personal by addressing the loss of himself:

Then I will no longer

Find myself in life as in a strange garment

Surprised at the earth

And the love of one woman

And the shamelessness of men (7-11)