Poet Allen Ginsberg was a leader of the Beat movement that emerged after World War II. The Beats addressed a generation that they considered to have been “beaten” down by recent history and the crass commercialization that surrounded them. The Beat generation, which incidentally corresponds to the literary “Lost Generation” that emerged after World War I, had survived both the Great Depression and World War II, and lately had been subjected to the emergence of television and its concomitant constant and hypnotic barrage of advertising. Having suffered 25 years of hand-me-downs, poverty and the rationing of commodities, Americans were voracious and easy targets for advertisers’ directives to buy. The “neon fruit supermarket,” is a metaphor for what America had become: a garish, commercial milieu that contrasts against Whitman’s naturalist word pictures of America a century before. Whitman’s America is gone. The fact that shopping has become a major leisure pastime in the U.S., generati

ng such present day phrases as “mall rats” and “mall culture,” proves that Ginsberg and the Beats lost their battle. The movement nevertheless spawned the Hippie movement, which targeted, among other issues, commercialization.

But we should not ignore the subtext. The word, “fruit,” was a common term in the 1950s, intended to alienate and denigrate homosexuals. Ginsberg appears to co-opt this term in two ways. By including himself, Whitman and Lorca among the avocados and tomatoes, he uses imagery to embrace the term, thereby disarming its sting. Moreover, these homosexuals are also poets, and as such might be seen as the real fruit borne by our young country.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) essentially defined democratic America in his poetry. Self educated and raised in Brooklyn, he spoke in an American voice at a time when Americans were intent upon pretentious imitation of the English, looking to them for a sense of what can only be called "class." He is best known for Leaves of Grass, which was found to be offensive by government officials. His "Calamus" poems, among which are "To a Stranger," "City of Orgies," "Behold This Swarthy Face," "We Two Boys Together Clinging," were homoerotic in nature.3

Some topics in this essay:
Walt Whitman, Whitman Lorca, War II, Buddhists Beat, Garcia Lorca, Supermarket California4, Whitman Ginsberg, Ginsberg Whitman, II Beats, Civil War, walt whitman, allen ginsberg, world war, war ii, whitman lorca, emerged world, world war ii, emerged world war,