Allen Ginsberg’s poem “A Supermarket in California” and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem “Constantly Risking Absurdity” describe the struggle within to find beauty and self worth. Where Allen Ginsberg is lost in the market, desperately trying to find inspiration from Walt Whitman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti portrays the image of the poet frantically trying to balance on a high wire, risking not only absurdity, but also death. Both of these poems deal with their poet’s struggle to find meaning and their fears of failure.
Where Ginsberg fears he will never find Whitman’s dream, Ferlinghetti fears falling off the high wire and being submitted to absurdity and death. In the beginning of Allen Ginsberg “A Supermarket in California”, Ginsberg comes to the supermarket, having a headache and being fatigued. This illustrates his physical and psychological exhaustion. Searching for inspiration or something that will clinch his thrust, it appears to him in the form of his mentor and hero, Walt Whitman.
Ginsberg describes him as a sad lonely old manan image displaying Whitman’s style of poetry in modern America, lost within a distorted view of what Whitman dreamed America would become (Analysis of “A Supermarket in California”). Ginsberg, with the help of Walt Whitman, is trying to find his way home, just like Odysseus’ odyssey for Ithaca. Ginsberg’s home is an openly tolerant society with spiritual orientation to the world.
“Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight? In these lines, Ginsberg is turning toward Whitman for guidance, only to find that Whitman himself is incoherent to his surroundings. He is seen as the old ways, obsolete to an artificial mass produced America. Ginsberg is left, homeless and in despair. Readers last see Walt Whitman on a smoky bank, staring back at his dream of America across Lethe (the river of forgetting), a forgotten dream in modern society which Ginsberg is frantically trying to discover (Ginsberg). To clarify Ginsberg’s struggle, one must first understand Walt Whitman and his relationship to Ginsberg.
Whitman viewed America as open, democratic, tolerant, accepting, ever-questioning, and grand in scale (Miller). Many of Walt Whitman’s poems have outdoor settings that symbolize his vision of a free open-minded America. Ginsberg decides to portray an opposite setting than Whitman’s poems in order to show how Whitman’s dream is not present in today’s society. A society, as Tyrus Miller claims, is “an era of anti-Communist witch hunts, preprocessed food, television advertising, and nuclear bombs. ” Ginsberg is inspired by Walt Whitman’s dream of a diverse society.
Although he is inspired, Ginsberg clearly lacks the confidence in himself and modern America to achieve this dream. He has many fears and displays them in numerous ways. The supermarket itself is a clausphobic environment, where store staff and imaginative detectives closely survey every move of the poet as he searches. In Whitman’s poems, there is an image of work and production, while Ginsberg’s poems show spending of money and consuming. In “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman, he describes a butcher boy cutting meat in a market.
While Ginsberg’s poem centers around a supermarket, where everything is prepackaged and ready to buy. This accentuates Ginsberg’s fear of a non tolerable society. His run in with Garcia Lorca, a Spanish poet who also admired Walt Whitman, is one of shock and fright. Garcia Lorca was killed by rebels during the Spanish Civil War, a fellow poet who died searching for Whitman’s dream. His discovery of Garcia is one of disbelief, “and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons? Garcia’s presence in this poem is intended to show the fate of those who fall off the high wire, foreshadowing the fate of Ginsberg if he does not succeed in his search (Miller). In the poem “Constantly Risking Absurdity,” Lawrence Ferlinghetti gives readers a visual of an acrobat walking a high wire and compares it to a poet writing a poem. There must be a truth and realism for the poet to capture beauty and such truth can put the poet at a direr threat of absurdity.
Absurdity is defined as the condition or state in which humans exist in a meaningless, irrational universe wherein people’s lives has no purpose or meaning (www. dictionary. com). In the first lines, “Constantly risking absurdity and death” Ferlinghetti puts absurdity before death, pointing out the poet’s strong opinion that life without meaning or purpose is far worst than death. At the same time the degree of truth that the poet must use to capture the beauty which he seeks to portray in his poem can put him on a high wire, desperately trying to balance truth over absurdity (Analysis of “Constantly Risking Absurdity”).
While the meaning of “Constantly Risking Absurdity” is seen through the text, Ferlinghetti does a remarkable job of not only giving the meaning of his poem through the text, but also by structure of his poem. At first glimpse his poem is perceived as unstructured, however, an observant reader will see Ferlinghetti implement structure to draw attention to important words and illuminate the significance of ideas. In the first two lines of his poem, Ferlinghetti uses his structure to guide attention to the word absurdity, implying that the risk of absurdity is far more terrifying than the risk of death.
Lines six through eight read, “the poet like an acrobat climbs on rime to a high wire of his own making”, and these lines are made more visual by their structure. Lines six (the poet like an acrobat) and seven (climbs on rime) are greatly shorter than line eight (to a high wire of his own making), illustrating the poets climb on rime to the high wire. From line nine to twenty the length stays average and fluctuates seldom, presenting the poet like an acrobat, swaying back and forth on the high wire. Lines twenty five through twenty seven once again build a staircase for the poet to deliverer beauty.
While lines twenty six through thirty one repeat the poets sway on the high wire. Ferlinghetti also uses structure to emphasize important lines. By placing key lines farther toward the left, readers can focus in on the message Ferlinghetti is trying to relay. This also separates the major lines from the “leading up to” lines. All these techniques that Ferlinghetti demonstrates reinforce the message that he is seeking to illustrate (Fontane). Both of these poems go hand and hand. Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem “Constantly Risking Absurdity” depicts the struggle poets go through finding their inner beauty.
Balancing gracefully, but at the same time risking repetition, pride, and even death, Ferlinghetti understands that most poets have not succumbed to the level they want to be at. Whether from fear of failure or lack of inspiration, they stay trapped within a supermarket searching hungrily for satisfaction. Ginsberg’s poem is an example of Ferlinghetti’s philosophy on poets. He’s tired, weak, and eager to find serenity. Afraid to search alone, he looks to Walt Whitman to help him, only to find Whitman as lost as him. At the end of Ginsberg’s poem he never finds his serenity and is left to walk the streets wandering.
These poems illustrate to readers the struggles in finding one’s inner self and fear of failure. If there is not confidence in one’s self, than one will never have the mindset to find their inner beauty. Odysseus’s persistence in his quest to reach home leads him to his goal. Even after many years of traveling, he still holds on to his dream of reaching Ithaca. After each attempt leads him further away from home, he dusts himself off and gets back up. That is what Ferlinghetti is trying to get across. Poets must be willing to risk everything to reach their goals and they must not quit until they reach them.
