Roadlight licks the night ahead, licks
the white line on night's new hide, licks
the undulating blacktop flat, sticks it's end-
less forking tongue out onward, flicks
itself at culvert, tree, passing truck, a sign
insisting heartbeats equal conscious life
(it may be) of someone's (maybe my)
forever unborn child. I let the knife
of wing inside and sing A Whiter Shade of Pale,
no earthly reason why, and think of what
won't be and who, and whether it be
speed, wind, song, or my mind'a roar
that drowns for once time's slangy whine,
here comes hope to climb clear of before;stillborn hope with desperate, Moro-reflex,
undead grip climbs right back up my neck,
raising each pointless, residual nape hair
in ancestral salute to an absence, to the air
that won’t question itself, won’t ever check
the moral rearview. I accelerate gamely,
wondering what makes me want to leave
each person, place and thing I learn to love.
What shoves me off again, racing insanely,
as if to the place that will always save
a place for me, a room that will contain
the kind of people who’d embrace the things
I’m still afraid I’m still afraid to face.
February 2010
In Night Drive poet J. Allyn Rosser uses repetition and alliteration to explore her reasoning for running away from her problems.
Repetition: "Roadlight licks the night ahead, licks" "licks the undulating blacktop"
"(it may be) of someone's (maybe my)"
Alliteration: "think of what won't be and who, and whether it be"
"speed, wind, song, or my mind's roar"
Theme: It is important to understand the reasoning behind the things you do.
Repetition: "Roadlight licks the night ahead, licks" "licks the undulating blacktop"
"(it may be) of someone's (maybe my)"
Alliteration: "think of what won't be and who, and whether it be"
"speed, wind, song, or my mind's roar"
Theme: It is important to understand the reasoning behind the things you do.
I feel the poem is about a man or a woman that has just suffered a loss and is running away to avoid facing it. The poet's word choices such as, heartbeats, forever unborn, stillborn, undead, and the reference to the song 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' make me feel like the speaker lost their child. The poet makes the speaker seem sad, frantic, and desperate to escape. Also, the poet opens the poem using personification when describing the light on the road.
ReplyDeleteIn the poem "Night Drive", Rosser uses poetic techniques to explore a particular situation, which in this case was going a drive to escape her problems in life. An good example of imagery used is "I accelerate gamely,wondering what makes me want to leave each person, place and thing I learn to love."This shows the uneasiness in the narrator's mind. She is taking the drive because she needs to escape, but at the same time, she doesn't know why she is doing it. Another example of imagery used to the describe the situation is "I’m still afraid I’m still afraid to face." Even though she doesn't know why she is running, she knows she is running from something and wants to avoid it.
ReplyDeleteIn the poem "Night Drive" by J. Allyn Rosser, the poet uses personification and symbolism to show how the speaker is trying to run away from her past.
ReplyDeleteAn example of personification from the poem "Night Drive" is "Roadlight licks the night ahead." This shows how the speaker is trying to continue to move forward and on with her life and forget her past. She does not want to remember her past and is trying to run away from it.
Rosser uses the line "... Won't ever check the moral rear view" to show how the speaker does not want to look back on her past. This is an example of symbolism, "moral" meaning what she should have done what was right, and didn't, and is facing the consequences and is running away from them.
Due to the closing stanza of the poem "Night Ride," saying
ReplyDelete"What shoves me off again, racing insanely, as if to the place that will always save a place for me, a room that will contain the kind of people who’d embrace the things I’m still afraid I’m still afraid to face," I know that the poem is about the speaker leaving things behind that fear her. Whether it be physically or emotionally, she is detaching herself from that which "she is still afraid to face." Also because of this line, we know it is something that she has been trying to run from for a while because if it were new she wouldn't say it is "still" there.
Whoever the speaker is, she is familiar with the feeling of hope, and also familiar with the reality of losing that same hope. The use of the words "unborn," "stillborn," and "undead," could show that the situation she is having such difficulty facing could be due to the fact that she lost a child and she cannot go on loving life when she was so close to a life that was lost.