They don't do they?

I'm using this line of argument with my wife who is currently trying to get me, at my advanced age, to learn to drive on the miserable basis that, since we live in Misty Valley, Brigadoonshire, it would make the family's life inestimably better if both of us could drive for school, food, help etc. But if I drive, I tell her, it would be an admission that my poetry is bad.

The only exception to this rule that I know is Philip Larkin but Martin Amis (who, incidentally, thinks all good novelists have bad teeth) declares with some authority that Larkin's creativity declined as soon as he got behind a steering wheel.

Learn to drive. Larkin didn't have a wife and kids to drive to school.

Besides, there's the question of which comes first, the driving or the bad poetry. If you are a good poet, chances are you will not be able to master driving in any event. Now's the time to find out.

I drive pretty well. Which, I suppose, confirms your theory.

Driving is dangerous: It turns any previosly written poem into trash - instantly!

Conversely, if you should happen to write a good poem, your whole history as a car driver will never have happened, and history will be just as instantly rewritten: You will never have driven a car, have no driver's licence and none of the consequences of the car driving you've never done. This comes in very handy if you've been in a major traffic accident, or if you are about to get a ticket: But sir, you don't want to extort money from a poor, good poet. Look, here is a good poem for your wife. What do you say I give it to you, and none of this will ever have happened?

------------------
Svein Olav (The poet formerly known as Solan )

[This message has been edited by Svein Olav Nyberg (edited October 03, 2005).]

I presume this is tongue in cheek Hugh; either that or you need a better therapist. As I'm sure you know (or would know if you stopped to think), outside of totalitarian states, there has never been, nor will there ever be, a hierarchy of proper or improper subjects for poets.

As to poets who drive, there are too many to try to name. Driving is part of 20th/21st Century life, as your wife seems to understand. To pick two poets almost at random: Les Murray has a marvellous poem about the sense of liberation to be found in driving; and Heaney has written many poems out of the experience of driving. The following link is one of my favourites by Heaney:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~abardubh...a/poem023.html

And here's the first lines of Murray's 'Portrait of the Artist as a New World Driver':

"A car is also
a high-speed hermitage. Here
only the souls of policemen can get at you."

I would add that a car is also a stationary hermitage, though people may wonder what you're up to in there (see my poem on the Deep End: SANDYMOUNT).

Oh, and this might interest you:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...25/ai_19021753



[This message has been edited by Mark Granier (edited October 03, 2005).]

This discussion puts me in mind of Wendy Cope's assessment of tumps (typically useless male poets):

A tump isn't punctual or smart or efficient,
He probably can't drive a car
Or follow a map, though he's very proficient
At finding the way to the bar.


Having said that, we don't own a car, though in theory I can drive one, at least if it is an automatic.

If I drive in a way that teenage kids find thrilling (because of my spontaneous "sound track" about other drivers, I presume), does that make me a good or a bad poet?

It's not driving that anyone has to learn, Hugh (it's so easy in an open area!), but staying on the road, especially when there's another car trying to get by.

Try it, it's fun! Especially in Brigadoonshire when it's foggy.

Jo Shapcott said that 2 tendencies she'd noticed in poets were 1) hypochondria 2) an inability to drive (or at least a dislike of driving).

That's what Jackie Kay said, as well, in recent article in the Independent.

Now this is something I know about if not poetry.

I don't know if "Good poets don't drive cars" but if you do not drive your poetry will improve.

Driving a car slowly through the uncrowded country side is one thing, but these days, at least in Texas, it is mind numbing and dangerous. Over 80 teenagers have died in auto wrecks in the last year in the county San Antonio is in, and 8 people have died in a four mile stretch of four lane highway south of where we live. People here drive fast, road rage is frequent, and accidents (crashes) are all over the place. People pass recklessly, tailgate and speed without regard for consequences, and there are few, because law inforcement here is lacking. And don't be the one who suggests putting speed-bumps in your neighborhood here in Texas!

Last year, when I drove my son to school, there were four accidents in four days in a row in the one mile to the school.

Poetry does not come out of being mentally and emotionally shocked on daily basis. Stress blinds you.

It is so odd to think that we have all these wonderful things in modern life and yet people drive so fast in cars that will literally disintegrate into pieces if anything goes wrong--and they do it to themselves! Why? So they can get to their stressful jobs sooner?

The ugly American is becoming the angry American.

The ideal life for me does not have a car in it. This is why I am attracted to places like San Francisco, New York, Monhegan Island and Sanibel Island. I lived half my life on 5 square miles in Baltimore, almost all in walking distance.

Driving is really a stress factor, which will affect all of your life, let alone writing poetry.

If I go down to the Trek bike store today and buy a bike will I write better poetry? It might better be an off-road bike. Texas has the highest death rate of cars killing bicyclers in the US.

TJ

A cautionary tale about driving, even in idyllic Iowa:

Driving: The Far Corner of the Map

The scaly back of the monster
writhing in the green sea
rises in humps, and he rides it
till a last and highest
twist of the neck
flings him westward
into a blinding tongue of flame.

He falls off
the edge of the world.

Ah, how the mind can wander. I think Shakespeare had poet drivers in mind when he wrote: "Such men are dangerous. They think too much."

Cheers,
Jan