"Intro to Poetry" by Steven Bauer
You thought it was math that taught
the relation of time and speed
but it’s farther than you knew
from that sun-lit white-walled classroom
to this darkened lounge with its couch
and overstuffed chairs. How many miles,
would you say, since you talked
as if poetry were no distorting mirror,
one-way street? But listen, sometimes
it’s like this, a stranger’s Ford pulls up,
and you, with no plans for the afternoon,
get in. He doesn’t talk, stares at the road
and it’s miles before you understand
you didn’t want to travel. His lips say no
as you reach for the radio’s knob.
In this silence you fall deeper
into yourself, and even the car
disappears, the stranger’s face blurs
into faded upholstery, and all things
being equal, you’re alone as though
you’ve wandered into a forest with night
coming on, no stars, the memory of sun
and a voice’s asking Is this my life?
Cool poem. Extended metaphor. Literary analysis.
ReplyDeleteI love the analogy of a poem as a ride with a stranger where the reader falls deeper into herself. I can really relate. Sometimes I come across poems unexpectedly and get that epiphany or connection with something in the poem.
The two spaces between the stanzas- I haven't seen this before...symbolizing going deeper, the falling into the self. A dream state.
ReplyDeleteHeady, wandering, airy- connecting to the air and space "elements". It is said that people, like the narrator in this poem, who contains more air and space than the other elements are floaty- creative- imaginative- "is this my life"- spacey- and light- and sometimes it takes the grounding....(maybe the forest as a symbol?) to bring them back down to the earth. To a sense of relation to the stranger.
And maybe that stranger is a part of themselves...
Delete