Turtles All the Way Up
 

Turtles All the Way Up

There is no road ahead for you to steal.
Your road rage will not change the way I drive.
You only have two pedals and a wheel.

Believe me, I have nothing to conceal—
There's no agenda crafted to deprive
You any inch of road ahead to steal.

This honking ceaselessly will just reveal
You're not the sharpest Hornet in the hive.
I, too, have only pedals and a wheel.

You race ahead, then brake till tires squeal.
It hurts your ego, driving forty five.
There is no road ahead of me to steal.

You'll never reach the speed you think ideal,
Or shift your cruise control to overdrive.
You only have two pedals and a wheel.

The pulsing brake lights slalom like an eel
As marching turtles steadily arrive.
There is no road ahead of me to steal—
So impotent, those pedals and that wheel.

A villanelle, and a timely subject at this time of year. I live in Alaska, and October is when newcomers to the state learn how to drive in icy conditions. Many of them experience the same frustration as the impatient driver your N is dealing with.

The only question I had was on S6L1. I’m having trouble visualizing what, exactly, the brake lights are doing that could be described as slaloming. Otherwise, nice job!

Glenn

Thanks, Glenn.
I was picturing cars bumper-to-bumper on a curvy road. You'd see their brake lights move in waves along the line. You're lucky if you haven't driven through Chicago on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving!

Turtles All the Way Up
 

Hi Marshall,
I like this a lot: such clever and concise use of language. The first line, and its variations, deftly conjure up the kind of person who just can't bear to drive behind another car. (I like this perspective on him, too--instead of just dismissing him (or her) as an idiot, you give some insight into his character. The poem makes me wonder: If he must have those extra few yards of road, is he that way in the rest of his life, too?)

The only thing that confused me was the title. When I read it, I thought the poem was going to refer to the Native American idea of the Earth being supported by a ladder of turtles. But the poem didn't go there at all (unless I missed something--always a possibility). So when I arrived at the turtles crossing the road, I had a bit of a hard time deciding if they were real or symbolic.

Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thanks.
Barbara

I like this. It's the right sort of poem to be a villanelle, IMO.

I find the title distracting. I get the turtle thing, but it doesn't fit the poem. I started off thinking he was talking to an actual turtle. Maybe that's just me trapped in my prison of literalness, but I don't think so. It's the wrong joke for this poem.

I do like the poem. Thanks for posting it.

Thanks, Barbara!
Good point about defining the character behind. I have to be careful not to assume too much!
Yes, that's the phrase and image I borrowed. But since the cars are ahead, it's "up". The "arriving turtles" are cars entering the highway and merging, adding to the congestion.

Welcome, Marshall! I recognize you as a frequent Light contributor.

"sharpest Hornet in the hive" lands well, an -ive rhyme I wasn't expecting.

Some of the -eal rhymes feel forced, including the repetend "steal," which doesn't feel like what the impatient driver is trying to do. I don't know why the angry driver would think N was concealing anything.

The congestion is described in terms of what isn't (no road ahead). If at least once the crowd of cars (referred to missably in the title) were mentioned, it would be more present in the poem.

The title made me expect something metaphysical.

FWIW.

John and Max:
Good point about using the title for setting the traffic congestion scene! How about "Parkway Parade" or "Gridlock Aggression"?

When you're maintaining a minimum following distance and someone squeezes into it, I feel like there is a "steal" of your position. But yeah, I'll work on replacing the "deprive" stanza.

Marshall, I'm afraid this isn't working for me. I'll try to explain why. First some general remarks, then some inline comments.

I too was put off by the word "steal," since it's not a word I would ever use in this context. Indeed, I didn't even understand what you meant by it. When you start with "There is no read ahead for you to steal," I was immediately confused since I took it literally, i.e., the road is ending so there is no road ahead. The way I now understand you to have meant it, however, is not how I would phrase it. When someone tries to pass me on a highway, I don't ever think of it as someone trying to "steal" the road. Do you? I literally didn't understand what you meant, and I didn't even think of the possibility that you meant the distance between the speaker and the car ahead of the speaker.

But my bigger issue with the poem is that it doesn't really go anywhere. You've pretty much said everything in the first three lines, and the rest of the poem is simply keeping it going for the sake of the form. This, of course, is what makes villanelles so hard to write, since the need to keep using the same two lines makes it difficult to develop a new thought or go off in a new direction.

When I read a poem (or when anyone does, for that matter) my mind immediately goes into the mode of actively trying to detect metaphors or greater meaning. When there's a "road" in a poem, it's usually more than just a road, as in 'the road not taken" and many other familiar poems and songs. What I was looking for in your poem, and not finding, was at least a small hint or vague sense that we are dealing with more than just one particular road, and the driver is on some sort of significant journey. Instead, at the end I could only conclude that the poem is no more than it appears on the surface, which for me was not sufficiently interesting.

I have a suggestion for you to consider. I think it would be more interesting if you made the speaker into the angry driver. Something like:

There is no road ahead for me to steal.
My road rage will not change the way I drive.
I only have two pedals and a wheel.

That would change the focus from a dismissive and superior narrator who presumes to know everything about the driver of the car behind him, to a confessional narrator who is authoritatively telling us his own feelings and experience.

I can’t argue about the most natural way to say it, since it’s been years since I’ve driven or even been in the US, but oddly enough, I never doubted for a moment what was meant.

Thanks for the thoughtful response, Roger!
You're absolutely right - the poem doesn't go anywhere, nor is it a grand metaphor for anything. It's just a driver observing the behavior of the driver directly behind. I'm okay with that.

On the other hand, I could offer explanations here for (most of) your in-line comments, but that was the poem's job. The fact that an experienced reader like yourself can't picture what I intended means that my writing is not as accessible as I need to be. I appreciate that criticism!

.
A few thoughts — And welcome to the Sphere!

• I like it, but not all the way. The first stumble for me was in the first stanza. I just couldn't get the idea out of my head that it was a cyclist — possibly a unicyclist — that was raging. (I'm not the sharpest Hornet in the hive : )) But I eventually realized it was the steering wheel. So obstacle overcome.
  
• The N feels a bit too calm to be gridlocked. Though zen driving is an art form.
  
• Roger's suggestion of making the N the angry driver is interesting. I think it would require a reworking of the language, since presently, as I said, the driver is channeling zen.
  
• As for the descriptor "steal", I, too would not have used that to describe a road rager — though like Carl I get what you getting at. The language I use while in my car is unlike any other language I typically use. There's something about being in a capsule. Many words come to mind that I might mutter under my breath at a road rager, but "steal" isn't one of them.
  
• Then there's always that chance that what is happening is not what it appears to be. That's when that empathic/empathetic side of me kicks in that imagines anguish when all I see is anger. Could it be that the rager was desperate to get home with the medicine his dog desperately needs, or to the hospital to be with his dying wife, or late to his own wedding that he is already in a state of panic about to begin with? Could it be? Usually it's not, but I use it sometimes to help me to find my moment of zen.
  
• But I like the form and enjoy watching poets engage in it. There are a few very good practitioners of the villanelle here. With some practice you may become one of them

.

Turtles All the Way Up
 

Just to give you one more opinion here, Marshall, I'm with Carl on this one.

Something, I think, depends on your intended audience for the poem. Roger says, "When I read a poem (or when anyone does, for that matter) my mind immediately goes into the mode of actively trying to detect metaphors or greater meaning." That's the response of a poet-critic.

But, with all respect to Roger, everyone does not read a poem that way. Some of us prefer to surrender to the words and images and music and discover the meaning of the poem that way.

I'm not saying one of these approaches is better than the other; but they are very different.

Barbara

The road-stealing terminology was actually not a problem for me. I did find the title confusing.

I can't picture what is going on with the lights being like an eel.

Mostly though, I'm having a hard time seeing why this needs to be a poem at all. It's certainly a relatable experience from daily life, but the poem didn't transform that experience for me. It didn't tell me anything I haven't thought on a daily basis while being tailgated, and it didn't tell it to me in a way that I found particularly memorable, surprising, or funny.

I do like the line "You only have two pedals and a wheel" and your variations on it. It just isn't enough, for me.

And with equal respect, I disagree. I believe that everyone reads poems that way, whether or not they know it. A poem about trying to decide which road to take, or about pausing one's horse in the snowy woods, would be trivial if the mind did not automatically allow the situation to resonate into other meatier concerns. Frost once said a poem has to mean two (or more) things at once, and I agree. A poem that merely tells us some annoying guy was tailgaiting the speaker has absolutely nothing to say to me unless it also says more, at least at some intuitive level. There's no point surrendering to the images if the images are mundane and lack subtety or resonance. (I see Hilary's related comment, and I naturally agree).

It's kind of the formalist's trap that many poems fall into, fulfilling the formal dictates becomes the end in itself—so fastidiously that the open-endedness of poems that Roger is speaking of becomes closed off in the process. The miracle of a great formalist poem is that it can be both open and closed at the same time. To settle for less is just another mundane exercise. Such exercises have their charms, of course, but those charms are ephemeral, and echoless, and quickly fade from poetic recollection.

Nemo

Either would make the congestion more present. If there's a way to include it in an early line of the poem, even better.

I'm curious, Roger. You say, " I believe that everyone reads poems that way, whether or not they know it.." That's a pretty comprehensive statement, and I wonder what evidence you have to support it. Thanks. Barbara

Jim: Okay, the unicycle cracked me up - I definitely need to estblish the scene. For a title, I could go with "To the Driver Behind Me on the Freeway During Rush Hour". It's pretty brutal, but not much more than "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening".

Whether or not the guy has good reason for impatience, nothing he was doing was actually helping him reach his destination sooner. The only way to make progress would be to cut in front of me (that's the "steal", which I see is too subtle) but I'm saying there's no room for such a maneuver.

While I appreciate the discussion regarding deeper meanings, I'm going to stay out of it. If that's the kind of analysis that makes this board thrive (you may have noticed that my critical comments are all on "flow" and meter) then maybe it's just not the place for me. I'm fine with that—really.

Otherwise, I am grateful for all the thought and expertise behind these comments, and have learned a lot. Thank you, all!