Question

When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;

Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

—Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman

 What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

 In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

—“A Supermarket in California,”
Allen Ginsberg

All lines from “A Supermarket in California” from Collected Poems 1947-1980 by Allen Ginsberg. Copyright ©1955 by Allen Ginsberg. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

The following elements are common in Ginsberg’s work. Which of them appear in this poem by Whitman? Check all of the boxes that apply to Whitman’s poem.

free verse

long lines

challenge to conventional values

celebration of existence

rhythm that is similar to human speech

Answer 1

All five apply.

- Free verse — no regular rhyme or fixed meter; the lines flow freely.
- Long lines — Whitman uses extended, flowing lines in this passage.
- Challenge to conventional values — the poem privileges direct, personal experience of the stars over the astronomer’s academic lecture.
- Celebration of existence — the speaker’s silent, reverent looking at the stars expresses awe and affirmation.
- Rhythm similar to human speech — the cadenced, anaphoric phrasing echoes natural spoken rhythms.