Fun House Antique Store by Allen Ginsberg
"Fun House Antique Store" is a poem by Allen Ginsberg that captures the vibrant essence of American life through the lens of seemingly ordinary objects. The poem evokes a sense of delight as Ginsberg reflects on the accumulation of items found in an antique store, reminiscent of his experiences traveling through various states. In this work, Ginsberg draws inspiration from literary figures like Walt Whitman and Jack Kerouac, celebrating the richness of human experience represented by everyday artifacts. As he describes the inviting atmosphere of an old-fashioned house filled with carefully detailed objects, readers are taken on a sensory journey that highlights both nostalgia and the passage of time.
Ginsberg's keen observation transforms mundane details—such as polished banisters and decorative doilies—into symbols of a broader human narrative. His contemplative tone conveys a longing for connection and appreciation amid the backdrop of a rapidly changing society. The poem culminates in a moment of introspection where Ginsberg expresses a desire to speak, revealing the artist's ongoing relationship with his audience. Overall, "Fun House Antique Store" illustrates Ginsberg's ability to find beauty and significance in the commonplace, inviting readers to reflect on the layers of meaning imbued in everyday life.
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Fun House Antique Store by Allen Ginsberg
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1992 (collected in Cosmopolitan Greetings, 1994)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
Recalling the catalogue of abundance that begins “A Supermarket in California,” “Fun House Antique Store” conveys a similar feeling of excitement at the marvels available to an American citizen among the fundamental things of the American nation. In this poem, it is the apparently mundane objects of life along the road that Ginsberg, in the tradition of Walt Whitman and Jack Kerouac, sees with delight as he has been “motoring through States” on the way to an event at the nation’s capital. No longer the “isolato” (as Whitman described himself) of the time in 1955 when he was about to publish “Howl” and enter the consciousness of his country, Ginsberg is now prominent enough to be traveling “through Maryland to see our lawyer in D.C.,” but he has retained his ability to recognize the manifestations of the warmly human amid a bleak and forbidding environment, something he did regularly in poems such as “Bayonne Entering NYC.”
Applying his sharp eye for the telling detail, Ginsberg evokes the feeling of an old dwelling made inviting by the accumulation of objects and devices that represent the substance of countless lives. Admiring the “old-fashioned house,” Ginsberg leads the reader on a tour, beginning with an entry past “Flower’d wallpaper, polished banisters/ lampshades dusted, candelabra burnished” that sets the location within the flow of time’s passage. Then, in a profusion of images that extend and deepen the mood of the house, he presents item after item as they appear: “washbowls beside the French doors/ embroidered doilies & artificial flowers/ ivory & light brown on mahogany/ side tables, a brass bowl for cards,/ kitchen with polished stove cold ready/ at Summer’s end to light up with split/ wood & kindling in buckets beside/ the empty fireplace, tongs & screen/ in neat order.”
The second floor is presented with similar attention to detail, until the poet is so overcome with the pleasure of contemplation that he declares, “I wished to make a speech,” and while his praise is not readily acknowledged (“attendants conferred/ minds elsewhere”), one person “applauded our appreciation,” perhaps a figure for the often limited but discerning audience that the poet finds and for which he is grateful even now, somewhat famous, with his “party on its way to the postmodern Capital.”
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