by Perci Paras / AB/BSE Literature / PNU
As quoted by one writer of post-modernism, “the only certain thing is absolute ambiguity”. In reading the poem “A Supermarket in California” by Allen Ginsberg, reader would most probably be lost in its ambiguous structure, subject, and even message.
In the post-modern point of view, as applied in literature, the poem is trying to show what happened to America after post-modernism, where as after establishing a great nation of “absolute” liberty, order and idealism (as people would say, in relation to their American Dream), the poem, then, starts to give ideas that will contradict what history has already recorded.
“We strode down the open corridors together in
Our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every
Frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier…”
From this stanza of the poem, what would be the picture of Americans? (You might say thieves… robbers…) and also, where is the image of America being the “Promise Land” – where everyone wants to be, to experience liberty and a life of peace?
Also in these lines:
“Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of
Lone past blue automobiles in driveways,
Home to our silent cottage?”
What has become of America now?The expertise of Allen Ginsberg in using the language to transform reality into images shows a tenet post-modernism. Even the intertextuality of subject proves it, using Walt Whitman as his object in the poem (the poet behind “I Hear America Singing”… and the famous lines “Oh Captain my Captain”, among others) surely, Ginsberg wrote his subject as if it is new, well in fact, ”nothing is new” (another tenet of post-modernism). Interestingly, he mentioned something controversial about Whitman:
“I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely
Grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator
And eyeing the grocery boys.”
The last lines exposes Walt Whitman as a homosexual – “eyeing the grocery boys”. This might be (or might not) destroying his image to create something new. Also, according to another tenet of post-modernism, there is no lo9nger a need to quote the “grand narratives”; they are incorporated, to the point where the line between high art and commercial forms seems increasingly difficult to draw. It also shows that writer like Ginsberg will no longer be able to invent new styles because they’ve already been invented; but instead, he tried to make something new out of something already existing.
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