In this poem we seem to have a conversation between two people. The speaker is apparently the driver and another person - a man not named "John" - who is apparently a passenger in the car. Why does the passenger rebuke the speaker-driver at the end? What is the speaker-driver ("I") afraid of? If you've read one of the Beat Generation novels of driving - for instance Kerouac's
On the Road - compare the speaker-driver here to the transcontinentally wandering beats in their cars. Is it possible that Creeley's poem is a rejoinder to the beat aesthetic of driving-for-the-sake-of-driving?
1. read the poem:
link to text
2. listen to five PennSound recordings of Creeley performing the poem:
link to PennSound
3. read/listen with
text-audio alignment of the poem:
link to PennSound
4. listen to three poets discuss the poem in a 30-minute podcast:
link to PoemTalk
5. watch a 14-minute discussion of the poem:
link to video
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