watch video on Allen Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California"

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From the course by University of Pennsylvania

Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (“ModPo”)

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University of Pennsylvania

Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (“ModPo”)

184 ratings

ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) will learn how to read poems that are supposedly "difficult." We encounter and discuss the poems one at a time. It's much easier than it seems! Join us and try it! ModPo is open all year, so you can enroll now, or any time, and join us. Each year we host a lively, interactive 10-week session, in which we move together through the ten-week syllabus. The next live 10-week session of ModPo will begin on September 7, 2019, and will conclude on November 18, 2019. Al Filreis will be in touch with you by email before the September 7 start of the course with all the information you'll need to participate. If you have questions, you can email the ModPo team any time at modpo@writing.upenn.edu. Much more information about ModPo can be found at modpo.org. During the 10 weeks of the course, you will be guided through poems, video discussions of each poem, and community discussions of each poem. And (unique among open online courses) we offer weekly, interactive live webcasts. Our famed TAs also offer office hours throughout the week. We help arrange meet-ups and in-site study groups. If you are curious about the ModPo team, type "ModPo YouTube introduction" into Google or your favorite search engine, and watch the 20-minute introductory video. You will get an overview of the course and will meet the brilliant TAs, who will be encountering the poems with you all the way to the end. If you use Facebook, join the always-thriving ModPo group: from inside Facebook, search for "Modern & Contemporary American Poetry" and then request to be added as a member. If you have any questions about ModPo, you can post a question to the FB group and you'll receive an almost instant reply. We tweet all year long at @ModPoPenn and you can also find ModPo colleagues using the hashtag #ModPoLive. ModPo is hosted by—and is housed at—the Kelly Writers House at 3805 Locust Walk on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia USA. All ModPo'ers are welcome to visit the Writers House when they are in our area. Our discussions are filmed there. Our live webcasts take place in the famed "Arts Cafe" of the House. To find out what's going on at the Writers House any time, just dial 215-746-POEM.

From the lesson

chapter 1.2 (week 2)—Whitmanians & Dickinsonians

<p><b>Week 2 of ModPo 2019 runs from Sunday, September 15 at 9 AM through Sunday, September 22 at 9 AM. </b>For those doing ModPo on their own or in small groups, the week 2 materials are open and available all year.</p><p>During this week, the second half of chapter 1, we will read the work of two poets writing in the Whitmanian mode and three poets writing in the Dickinsonian mode. We will encounter our Whitmanians, William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg, again later in the course—Williams as a modernist and Ginsberg as a Beat poet. The Whitman/Williams/Ginsberg connection is a strong one; Ginsberg wrote directly in response to both Whitman and Williams and saw the lineage as crucial to the development of his approach. Our Dickinsonians are more disparate in their response to Dickinson’s writing. Of the three—Lorine Niedecker, Cid Corman, and Rae Armantrout—only the last could be said to be a direct poetic descendant of Emily Dickinson's aesthetic. </p><p><b>ASSIGNMENTS:</b> During this week, there are two quizzes due and a writing assignment. Writing assignment #1 is open for submission between 9 AM on 9/16/19 and 9 AM on 9/22/19; after that, peer reviews will be submitted any time between 9 AM on 9/23/19 and 9 AM on 9/29/19. There is also a live webcast on Wednesday, September 18, at noon (Philadelphia time).</p>

watch video on William Carlos Williams’s “Smell!”15:14

watch video on William Carlos Williams's "Danse Russe"19:33

watch video on Allen Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California"15:40

watch video on Lorine Niedecker's "Grandfather Advised Me"13:54

watch video on Lorine Niedecker's "You are my friend"12:03

watch video on Lorine Niedecker's "Foreclosure"8:07

watch video on Cid Corman's "It isnt for want"14:28

watch video on Rae Armantrout's "The Way"21:40

watch video on distinctions between “Dickinsonian” and “Whitmanian” proto-modernism11:36

Meet the Instructors

Al Filreis
Kelly Professor, Dir. Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Faculty Dir. Kelly Writers House

So now we're talking about Allen Ginsberg's poem of 1955,

A Supermarket in California.

Ginsberg loved his great poems Howl and Cottage of this period.

Howl around the same time, Cottage a little later.

This is a much-anthologized poem but not necessarily one of his favorites.

But nonetheless a perfect one for us at this point in the course.

So what happens?

Set the scene.

Dave, set the scene, where are we?

>> He's walking down the streets of Berkeley and passes by

a supermarket, fluorescent lights, seeing- >> What time of day is it?

>> It's evening.

>> Yeah, it's really late in the evening.

It's sort of kind of the middle of the night, right?

Okay, so he's walking on the streets.

He goes into the supermarket and he has a vision.

He thinks he sees Walt Whitman.

Whom does he see actually?

Molly, who does he see?

>> Shoppers, families shopping.

>> Lots of people, but what about the Whitman figure.

>> Probably an old man.

Kind of an old homeless man.

>> And old man that's got a beard, yeah.

Homeless probably.

Ana, describe the guy.

>> I mean you hear later that he's got a gray beard, he's poking in the knee.

>> He's described as a grubber.

Right, and there's the question as to what the old man

is going to do when the store closes which suggests what?

Where's he going to go?

What does it suggest about his situation, Ally?

>> Well, that he doesn't necessarily have a place to go.

>> He's a hobo, he's a homeless man, he's a grubber.

He's going into the grocery store

just to have a place to be in the middle of the night.

Or maybe to pick up an avocado when the store detective isn't looking.

So what does Ginsberg do?

>> He kind of imagines that this guy is Walt Whitman and

he kind of goes with that.

>> That the incarnation in 1955, in this town, in California.

In this supermarket among this American plenitude, all this stuff.

That this is where Walt Whitman is.

This is the incarnation of Walt Whitman.

How does that make you feel?

How do you respond to that?

>> That makes me a little sad.

>> You're a little sad that this is what's happened to Walt.

This is Walt in our time.

Dave, is there a social critique here?

>> Yeah, I think he's sort of trying to be Walt Whitman in a modern society.

Sort of like a William Carlos Williams was in-

>> Ginsberg himself is trying to

identify with this old man.

And when he says, where is your beard pointing?

He's implying what?

Amarise, what's he implying for himself?

>> I thought he was looking to him for an image repertoire.

Some sort of guide in the line of Charon across the river.

>> Say something about Charon's role, his role.

>> He's a ferryman who brings the dead souls across the river to the afterlife.

>> And the river is the is the River of Forgetfulness.

>> Forgetfulness floating.

>> So, when Charon is no longer doing it- >> Then they've sort of been left in this

purgatory, aimless, wandering.

>> Forgetful, not knowing where you are, aimless, lonely.

That's a sad way to end a poem.

What is the lost America of love that's being talked about here?

Look at those two lines.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love, past what?

Past what?

>> Suburbia, automobiles, and driveways.

>> Blue automobiles and driveways, home to our silent cottage.

Max, what's going on there?

>> There's something alienating about this scene.

And Ginsberg sort of is portraying Whitman as a sort of lonely hobo.

Because this Whitmanian attitude doesn't obtain

in this setting of alienation and also individualism.

The kind of individualism that Whitman worked against.

He wanted this sort of opiniontarianism, this collectivism.

And instead we here in 1955 in this neon site of consumerism.

And everyone has their own house and their own things.

And no one is talking to each other.

And everyone's just buying their stuff and then going home.

>> And the Ginsbergian speaker feels alienated from that.

But is there something positive, is there something Whitmanian left?

Is there anything Whitmanian in this scene?

There's a word that hints it, Amorise?

>> I thought it was the setting of the supermarket, the setting of-

>> Yes, what's in there that's Whitmanian?

>> Just things that are normal, natural everyday.

>> A lot of stuff.

Ginsberg, the speaker, went into the supermarket dreaming of enumerations,

catalogs, lists, things, plenitude.

American life, peaches, whole families, aisles full of husbands.

This is a great scene.

This is almost like the blab of the pave.

Almost like that scene, except that it's not, really, is it?

>> There is a little bit of a surrealist or, felt like a little psychedelic edge

to it with the neon lights and the babies in the tomatoes.

>> The babies in the tomatoes.

Why is that line such a laugh line?

Babies in the tomatoes.

>> Because these images are for sale,

they're like a cliche as they're everyday items.

>> One season, 1950s Gerber baby, or a red sphere.

But it also sounds good it's a bit of a rhyme, babies in the tomatoes.

>> What's great about it for me if you think about the blab the pave section in

Song of Myself there's so much noise.

There's so much bustle, there's so much going on.

And in this, there's a lot going on in terms of the language.

But it's so much quieter and there's so much more loneliness.

There's silence and loneliness and sadness, and-

>> So what is Walt, the bald figure,

the homeless man, the grubber doing, actually?

Ginsberg sees Walt seeing the American plenitude with the families.

The guy that Ginsberg is seeing is childless.

The people that are being seen children, husbands, wives, babies in the tomatoes.

So, what is the grubber doing, actually?

What's his role, what's he doing literally?

>> Well, I think he's loitering in this kind of American dream that he

doesn't have.

>> He's doing a little more than loitering, yeah.

>> Because it's interesting that there's such

a contrast in tone in the poem between the illuminated supermarket.

The neon bright supermarket in the middle of the night.

If you listen to the recording of Ginsberg.

His voice even kind of just becomes sadder in

the last part when he's outside in the darkness.

And in a way, it kind of mirrors the 1950s, almost, gilded age.

And the gild is, in this case, the bright lights at the supermarket.

Just having everything out in front of you.

But once you leave you're kind of directionless.

>> Good, so let's go back to the second stanza.

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.

What's he doing, what is the old man doing?

Dave?

>> He's wandering around just and checking out the environment.

>> But he's doing a little more than that.

>> He's interrogating it.

>> He is interrogating it.

Who killed the pork chops?

What kind of question is that?

>> [LAUGH] >> That's hilarious.

>> It's wonderful, but what's he asking?

He's really asking a fundamental question.

While the rest of us, husbands and wives and babies,

are just that looks good, pork chops for $1.

That's fine, put that in the basket.

The basket is full of American plenitude, and Walt is saying-

>> Where did this come from?

>> Who killed this?

Which means what?

Pork chops, who killed the pork chops?

What kind of question is that?

>> It's the kind of question that the supermarket is set up

to take off of our minds.

I mean in a supermarket you don't actually have to see the butcher.

You don't have to see the animal.

All you get is the pork chop, that's it.

>> Those babies are going to grow up into Americans who complain in the 60s.

Said, I'm tired of a culture where I didn't even know growing up

that pork chops weren't shaped that way when they were.

>> [LAUGH] >> I want to go back to the land, right?

But it's a specific kind of question uttered by a Jewish poet,

a self-consciously Jewish poet.

The origin of this pork, who killed it?

We need to know who killed it.

It is kind of a Kosher question, but it's obviously larger than that.

Poking among the meats, is this grade A?

Who killed the pork chop?

What price bananas?

Are you my angel?

Those are equivalent kind of questions.

These are a catalog of the kind of questions Walt Whitman would ask in

1950s America.

One, where do the pork chops come from?

What is the specific price of these bananas?

And are you my angel, while eying the grocery boys?

>> The fact that those are equivalent is really, I think, interesting and

weird and crazy.

>> Weird and crazy?

>> Well, I mean, who killed the pork chops?

We just discussed how- >> Yeah.

>> Loaded that is.

And then, what price bananas?

I mean, that seems to be so much less significant.

>> Right, yes.

>> But the kind of turn in the language,

most people would probably ask how much are these bananas?

Not what price bananas?

And then are you my angel?

>> Completely different kind of question.

>> Completely different question, but they're all on the same level of

importance in this catelogue which is awesome.

>> It seems like by interrogating all the items and imaging either agency

behind them, or some specificity or distinction to each of the items.

He's taking poetic material from his environment.

And that's why he says at the end of that stanza, that they're tasting and

possessing without ever passing the cashier.

They're stealing the essence of every, so called, product's and

reinvigorating >> That would be Ginsberg and Whitman.

They don't have to pay, they're more ethereal figures.

Ginsberg is trying to derive that positionality from Whitman.

Whitman has this way of floating through American life.

So he asks a loaded question.

Maybe this is why he doesn't like the poem so much because it's too loaded.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman?

And he means that in a literal sense.

Where is this homeless guy going?

I'd like to go with him, I'd like to be this aimless.

But it has its consequences, alienation, loneliness.

But where are we going is obviously a big question about America.

Is this where Whitman leads us?

This embrace of American plenitude and essentially consumerism of everything.

This love of America leads us to this kind of scene.

>> And the fact that the doors close in an hour, you know?

The plenitude actually does have an end to it-

>> Has a constraint.

So let's conclude by an open invitation to anybody to talk about Whitmanism.

Ginsberg's version of Whitmanism in the specific context of loss,

the lost America of love.

In the context of blue automobiles and driveways.

Say anything on that score, Dave Poppler.

>> I think it's interesting that Ginsberg seems to focus a lot on the families and

on Walt Whitman being lonely, himself being lonely.

It seems like a critique of that whole heteronormative family unit that he and

Whitman- >> Certainly.

>> Were only outside.

>> Certainly, this is an embrace of a certain aspect of Whitman that

Williams was not necessarily embracing.

Eying the grocery boys, feeling alone among all of these

nuclear families, to use a loaded phrase from the 50s.

Feeling alienated from that.

And from the car and driveway life even at Berkeley, California at that time.

Ally, a thought on this context?

Loss, love? Of America lost, America of love,

what does America need, Amarice?

>> Well, he repeats lonely several times.

So it seems to be towards the end when this very vibrant and

vivid scene, has turned somber and gray.

And it's a nostalgia or lamenting the fact that this

America collectivity and democracy is sort of a fiction.

And so he's asking, are we going to continue dreaming of this fiction?

Or maybe will it turn into reality one day?

>> If Ginsberg is really Whitmanian, and I think he is,

he will ultimately have an optimism.

There's a lot of exclamation points, and they're not all, here.

So we get to the end where the courage teacher hasn't himself run out of courage.

But he may be leading us toward alienation.

Ally, what was your thought about this courage teacher?

Or how it ends with Charon and Lethe?

Does it seem with meaning and optimistic to you?

>> Well, it's very nostalgic, which was interesting.

Because at this point, progress was on the minds of a lot of people.

And this is kind of trying to harp back to something that maybe we

sacrificed on the way, and- >> A time when Walt Whitman could be

an optimistic figure that America could at least belatedly embrace.

Molly, you get the final word on this, any thoughts on the end?

>> I think that maybe lonely only courage teacher refers to the passion of

Walt Whitman.

And that he really encouraged everybody to be all out there and

everything to be included.

And Ginsberg is sort of trying to imagine what

America Walt Whitman saw when he crossed the river to the other side.

And sort of what was left at that point for him.

>> And I can't help but get in the last word, myself.

Because of the relationship between this poem and Danse Russe.

Here we have these two alienated figures,

who don't belong to the suburbs, strolling along in the middle of the night.

Will we walk all night through solitary streets?

We have nowhere to go.

The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses.

One imagines Williams and Kathleen, the baby, and his wife, will both be lonely.

So the people inside the houses, the artists anyway, the geniuses are lonely.

And, of course, the people alienated from heterosexual,

normal, quote unquote normative life on the side streets of Berkeley

are just as lonely as the people inside.

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