A Supermarket in California carried the dead into the underworld, across the river Styx. The River Lethe was a different river in the underworld, which caused those who drank its waters to experience complete forgetfulness. The shades of the dead were required to drink the waters of the Lethe in order to forget their earthly life. In "Story Line", Ian Marshall suggests that the poem is written to show the differences in American life depicted by Whitman and that which faces Ginsberg in the 1950s: "It's the distance of a century—with Civil War and the 'triumph' of the Industrial Revolution and Darwinism and Freud
The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place is the third album by American post-rock band Explosions in the Sky, released on November 4, 2003 on the Temporary Residence label in the USA and on the Bella Union label. It is widely considered to be a concept album. "The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place" continues the patterns of the previous albums, with brooding, ominous melodies building into crashing climaxes. The album was produced and recorded by John Congleton. In an interview on "Slice of the Shiny", band member Munaf Rayani