A Supermarket in California (Reflection)

searching for something that will set him right, he dreams of Walt Whitman as a source of inspiration. Whitman is a literary and spiritual hero to Ginsberg and, in many ways, Ginsberg emulates Whitman’s style and subject matter in his own poems.
Ginsberg is being ironic when he writes that he is “shopping for images” in a “neon fruit supermarket.” One does not normally think about “buying” images, especially not in a supermarket. But by looking for his poetic inspiration in a commercial setting, Ginsberg underscores one of the themes of his poem: the reduction of every thing and thought in America to something that can be bought and sold