A Supermarket in California

Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California” is a prose poem written in free verse and composed of 12 lines. The speaker of Ginsberg’s poem addresses the poem’s subject directly: “What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman […]” (Line 1), signaling to the reader that the poem is an ode, which is a form of lyric poetry written to or for a specific addressee. While the poem is an ode, the specific literary device used here is known as an apostrophe, which is a direct address to someone living or dead, or a personification of someone. The narrator will later see Whitman in the grocery store, thus underscoring the use of apostrophe in the poem. The second half of the opening line, “I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon,” plunges readers into the freewheeling, stream-of-consciousness style and tone characteristic of Ginsberg and the Beats more generally.

While the first line establishes, place, subject, and tone, Line 2 reveals more about the speaker’s motives for taking a night walk, as “shopping for images” refers to seeking inspiration for writing poems.