Thursday, April 15, 2010
a supermarket in california
in this poem i stood and just thought what is he trying to mean. is wilment real? then i realize that wilment was an imaginary person. in this poem he is expressing things about life, how people go on and buy stuff ; people dont seen to care where it came from is food but witman the imaginary person is asking every single question he can. he is curious he wants to know who cut what why where and how much. i dont think much of the poem but i think he is admiring walmart ; how would this man think and act. america has come to the end where we could mimik food everything if we can it doesnt matter where it came from or how. people dont understand the meaning of natural; original or the environment. people just want things to be easily facilitated to them. i think he is viewing that.
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This poem is a bit more difficult than it seems, mostly due to the allusion to the 19th century American poet Walt Whitman, whose long-lined affirmation of (a somewhat mythologized, even then) American culture has been influential on many contemporary poets; the poem really questions whether Whitman's vision has place in contemporary American culture; the poem's imagery provides the answer (the great poet has become a lonely old bugger...); Whitman, were he alive today, would probably be another one of the "best minds" destroyed/driven to madness (see Howl)by a repressive culture. Consider the supermarket as a microcosom, or mataphor, for a superficial, commodified American culture. Study sheets/exercises should also help, as well as a sampling of Whitman's poetry--take a look, for eg., at "I Hear America Singing" (you might also read Ginsberg's "America" for an ironic counterpart)or "I Sing the Body Electric," etc. on the Poetry Foundation site
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