"drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going"
In my mind, the situation plays out like this: I picture two guys on the road, driving for days. It is night, and they've run out of things to talk about, and now they're just talking to hear themselves, to break the silence.
I feel like the narrator is stammering, babbling, not making much sense. When the friend speaks, I get the sense that he is telling the narrator to be quiet and pay attention to what lays ahead of them, rather than daydreaming and letting his mind wander.
In a way, he and his friend may represent two different ways a roadtrip can be approached; you can just drive to drive, dreaming, and thinking while you meander through the trip, or you can "look out where yr going", staying right on course, going by the book.
What I don't understand is why he calls his friend John, when that is "not his name"? Is there some underlying meaning that I'm not grasping?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree that there is a sense of forced conversation in this poem between the narrator and "John," although it seems like there is an inequality in friendship going on. The author is beginning to spout off his dreams about buying a big car to go someplace when his friend interrupts his train of though to tell him to focus on the road.
ReplyDeleteHis concept of a roadtrip in the poem, however, appears to be a way to break out of "darkness." What his darkness is I am not sure, but it definitely resembles the outlook of a roadtrip of both Sal and the narrator of Women in Cars. Sal wants to break away from his depressive, boring state in New Jersey, and the narrator of the other poem also seeks a release from boredom.
Perhaps this interruption represents the many interruptions people experience while seeking their real dreams, just as John Steinbeck described in Travels With Charley.
However, I'm very interested in why the author of this poem chooses to use "yr" and "sd." What meaning do you see in this?