I don’t really have any specific formula for what I decide to do a Cold Start about; it just has to be (mostly) car-related and interesting or funny or unexpected or something that justifies my greedily demanding your time to read it. I certainly go to old car brochures as a sort of default, I suppose, or some detail about a car that grabs me, for reasons I can’t really explain. I rarely do them about poems, though. I think there’s nothing against doing a Cold Start about a poem–I say this because I checked, reading through our only copy of the original Autopian By-Laws that are kept hidden in a cigar box behind the urinal nearest the light switch in the upstairs bathroom of Canter’s Deli in Los Angeles.
So, today, I feel like talking a bit about a car-focused poem, one by a poet I’ve always liked: the typographically adventurous and well-known poet e e cummings. I’ve read that he wasn’t really that fussy about writing his name in all lower-case like that, but it’s often done, and I think it sort of telegraphs the way he plays with the structure and rules of writing, so I like to render it like that.
Anyway, the poem in question is one called she being Brand, and it seems to have been first published in 1926, in a collection called is 5. Here it is, formatted as intended, at least as far as I have been able to tell:
she being Brand
-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff i was
careful of her and(havingthoroughly oiled the universal
joint tested my gas felt of
her radiator made sure her springs were O.K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her
up,slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell)next
minute i was back in neutral tried andagain slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my
lev-er Right-
oh and her gears being in
A 1 shape passed
from low through
second-in-to-high like
greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinityavenue i touched the accelerator and give
her the juice,good
(it
was the first ride and believe i we was
happy to see how nice she acted right up to
the last minute coming back down by the Public
Gardens i slammed onthe
internalexpanding
&
externalcontracting
brakes Bothatonce andbrought allofher tremB
-ling
to a:dead.stand-
;Still)
It’s a pretty fantastic poem, isn’t it? The type of car is never exactly specified, but for some reason in my head I always picture a Packard. Maybe a big Packard Eight? Or a smaller Six? I’m not really sure.
The poem does a wonderful job of conveying the experience of attempting to drive a new car, one that perhaps you’re not really familiar with just yet, so mistakes are made; gears are missed, profanities uttered, but eagerness fuels another attempt, and it works, and you feel the power and joy of the machine, driving it hard, stomping on those two brakes a bit hard, and finally coming to a hard stop as the engine idles, vibrating the whole frame of the car.
Is it sexy? I mean kind of, yeah, it is. But cars almost always are, or can be, at least. The poem is often read as an extended metaphor for a certain sort of eager, clumsy, but ultimately satisfying sex between young and inexperienced partners. It’s a raw, unpolished sort of sexuality, unpretentious and hungry, and all this without any overt references to sex or even any bit of human anatomy.
You can see this common take on the poem as it was shown in the 1988 movie Plain Clothes, which seems to be one of those movies where a cop goes undercover at a high school, in this case adding to the challenge by choosing to wear that shirt and that hat:
No one was trying for subtlety there. And maybe it’s best not to recall the guy reading the poem is an adult undercover cop, and those girls around him are underage.
I get why the poem is read sexually. It’s fun to read poems sexually, after all, and especially poems about cars. But in reading this poem, I’m wondering if our perpetually horny minds are blinding us from something obvious: it’s also just a really good poem about the experience of driving in the 1920s.
It conveys the exciting complexity and engaging details of driving, from an era when knowing how a car worked in a pretty high degree of detail was a near-requirement, even for a poet. There’s the frustration and complexity and the many, many opportunities to screw up, but there’s also the reward of getting that big, cumbersome brute hauling ass down the street.
I’m not saying e e cummings didn’t intend the poem to be a metaphor for that wonderful sort of unselfconscious, giddy sort of sex, but I am saying that if you just read the poem at a surface level, it’s a pretty fantastic taste of what the early days of motoring were like, from a more visceral and gut perspective than how we usually get this sort of thing conveyed.
Either way, it’s pretty hot.
It could be about a car, it could be about sex. But maybe it’s just about the excitement of trying anything new (with all the trepidation and butterflies that entails) coupled with the euphoria of succeeding?
So now I’m going to have to check that bathroom at Canters. And I’m craving that heavenly reuben sandwich.
Next up for the column: I’m in love with my car by Queen.
(I’m down for poetry anytime…)
“Right-oh”
As they would say down under in Australia: Righto!
“Just remember ALL CAPS when you spell the man name–”
The only thing I learned from studying poetry in school is that the answer to “Does this mean A or does this mean B?” is always “yes”.
As a Shakespeare scholar once told me, if it sounds like it might be naughty, it definitely is…
Trampled Under Foot by Led Zeppelin also comes to mind. Though the refrain explains it pretty well
e e cummings needs to get more recognition for inventing Standardized American Text Messaging.
Why not both? It’s marvelous both ways.
If this keeps up Jason’s going to have to get his wife a Mustang.
This is why The Autopian is the #1 car community on the interwebz.
pretty sure this is the only automotive journalism publication in the world, that would cover an ee cummings poem.. thank you.
Honestly I always read that on the surface, as about driving.. the sexual reading seems a bit of a reach. But maybe I’m undersexed.
A good accounting of the mechanics of driving in that time, and a persuasive account of the sexualities, at
https://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/cummings/Miller6.htm
Every autumn when the wind blows I remember,
what if much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer’s lie
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry
Tensions eternal
Yin and Yang, combustion’s internal
The joy of a perfect shift
Exuberance causes a drift
We dance seldom in sync
Harmony, not resonance I think
The scenery sweeping by
Soak the experience in, don’t ask why
Thank you
You’re very welcome! Took a while to get any feedback, feared I had gone Vogon.
And Prince’s Little Red Corvette was really about Corvettes.
Signed, a Corvette enthusiast
No no no it’s a metaphor for a pink ’64 Mercury Montclair.
I thought it was a boat.
“I’ve read that he wasn’t really that fussy about writing his name in all lower-case like that”
Relatedly, people will write the name of Archy (and Mehitabel) without capitalization but if one has actually read anything by Archy it’s obvious he would have wanted his name capitalized (in all caps, even) at every opportunity given how much he wanted access to the upper case. Only if Don Marquis’s newspaper offices had had, say, Smith Premier typewriters then it wouldn’t have been such a big deal, ha. (Yeah, on my mind on account of how just yesterday I drove a couple hours each way to pick up a circa 1903 Smith Premier No. 4 typewriter for my kid who’s living several states over and couldn’t get it himself, hence me getting it since it was relatively local to me. That typewriter has some 84 keys!! Because it has separate keys for lower case, upper case, and punctuation!!)
i was up to central
park yesterday watching some
kids build a snow man when
they were done and had
gone away i looked it
over they had used two
little chunks of wood for
the eyes i sat on one
of these and stared at
the bystanders along came a
prudish looking
lady from flatbush she
stopped and regarded the
snow man i stood
up on my hind legs in
the eye socket and
waved myself at her
horrors she cried even the
snow men in manhattan
are immoral officer arrest
that statue it winked
at me madam said the cop
accept the tribute
as a christmas present
and be happy my own
belief is that some
people have immorality
on the brain
archy
https://live.staticflickr.com/6176/6136868905_3a69f4d827_b.jpg
Ha, yeah, great poem & apropos of JT’s post. And that typewriter has even more keys than the aforementioned Smith Premier No. 4, dang… (awaiting my kid’s ID of that typewriter.)
Yeah, Archy sure could skewer morality like in this surprisingly long diatribe with a strong anti-Prohibition bent:
archy interviews a pharaoh
boss i went
and interviewed the mummy
of the egyptian pharaoh
in the metropolitan museum
as you bade me to do
what ho
my regal leatherface
says i
greetings
little scatter footed
scarab
says he
kingly has been
says i
what was your ambition
when you had any
insignificant
and journalistic insect
says the royal crackling
in my tender prime
i was too dignified
to have anything as vulgar
as ambition
the ra ra boys
in the seti set
were too haughty
to be ambitious
we used to spend our time
feeding the ibises
and ordering
pyramids sent home to try on
but if i had my life
to live over again
i would give dignity
the regal razz
and hire myself out
to work in a brewery
old tan and tarry
says i
i detect in your speech
the overtones
of melancholy
yes i am sad
says the majestic mackerel
i am as sad
as the song
of a soudanese jackal
who is wailing for the blood red
moon he cannot reach and rip
on what are you brooding
with such a wistful
wishfulness
there in the silences
confide in me
my perial pretzel
says i
i brood on beer
my scampering whiffle snoot
on beer says he
my sympathies
are with your royal
dryness says i
my little pest
says he
you must be respectful
in the presence
of a mighty desolation
little archy
forty centuries of thirst
look down upon you
oh by isis
and by osiris
says the princely raisin
and by pish and phthush and phthah
by the sacred book perembru
and all the gods
that rule from the upper
cataract of the nile
to the delta of the duodenum
i am dry
i am as dry
as the next morning mouth
of a dissipated desert
as dry as the hoofs
of the camels of timbuctoo
little fussy face
i am as dry as the heart
of a sand storm
at high noon in hell
i have been lying here
and there
for four thousand years
with silicon in my esophagus
as gravel in my gizzard
thinking
thinking
thinking
of beer
divine drouth
says i
imperial fritter
continue to think
there is no law against
that in this country
old salt codfish
if you keep quiet about it
not yet
what country is this
asks the poor prune
my reverend juicelessness
this is a beerless country
says i
well well said the royal
desiccation
my political opponents back home
always maintained
that i would wind up in hell
and it seems they had the right dope
and with these hopeless words
the unfortunate residuum
gave a great cough of despair
and turned to dust and debris
right in my face
it being the only time
i ever actually saw anybody
put the cough
into sarcophagus
dear boss as i scurry about
i hear of a great many
tragedies in our midsts
personally i yearn
for some dear friend to pass over
and leave to me
a boot legacy
yours for the second coming
of gambrinus
archy
I took that photo in 2010 and have been waiting for an opportunity to use it. I still have the typewriter, the car, and the patch.
there was one poem written after archy jumped onto the caps lock..
“CAPITALS AT LAST”
http://donmarquis.com/home/2011/10/26/capitals-at-last/
say boss please lock the shift
key tight some night
i would like to tell the story of
my life all in capital
letters
Yeah, I remember that all caps poem but it’d been many years since I last read it so it was good to read it again. I had always remembered it as the all caps being possible for Archy because of somebody leaving the caps lock on when leaving the office for the night, especially since sometimes engaging caps lock will involve using two buttons.
Based on a photograph of Don Marquis https://d3525k1ryd2155.cloudfront.net/h/068/830/1611830068.0.x.jpg the typrwriter would’ve been a Underwood 5; I actually have one myself, in fact, and I find that it indeed does take some not inconsiderable force to lock the caps, sadly putting it out of reach for poor Archy.
Couldn’t Pete the Pup capitalize, at least at random?
there are two
kinds of human
beings in the world
so my observation
has told me
namely and to wit
as follows
firstly
those who
even though they
were to reveal
the secret of the universe
to you would fail
to impress you
with any sense
of the importance
of the news
and secondly
those who could
communicate to you
that they had
just purchased
ten cents worth
of paper napkins
and make you
thrill and vibrate
with the intelligence
archy
A fellow Archy and Mehitabel fan! Well met. 🙂
Yeah, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar…
That’s what Bill Clinton said.
Ceci n’est pas une pipe
Incidentally pipe means bj in French, adding an extra layer of awesome here.
It’s about a car, so it is sexually charged. I don’t know about you guys, but my heart rate goes up when I see a ‘sexy’ car.
“sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” attributed to Freud although there’s no proof he ever said it.
Canter’s has an upstairs?
How did I not know this?
Lets face it: Anything written by a guy named “ee cummings” is sexual.
Pretty much just the restrooms are upstairs. (Maybe employees only spaces?). No upstairs dining.
Does the length of the poem imply there were no short cummings?
I feel like both camps are looking at this wrong.
This poem is for Mechanophilia enjoyers.
This is the “why not both?” answer.
just read an article about a sculptor, entitled, ‘why not all of these things at the same time ?”
which is a fair definition of poetry really..
I just read that. Arlene Schechet. OMG fantastic. Talk about painting and fabrication skills.
https://www.apollo-magazine.com/arlene-shechet-girl-group-storm-king-art-center-new-york/
( different article with a lot of photos )
Now that I think about it, maybe all of those broken down trucks in country songs are just a euphemism for erectile dysfunction.
He’s going the distance, he’s going for speed. She’s all alone in her time of need.
I believe that one was about working long hours to the detriment of personal relationships.
I was a full-grown adult when I really started to “get” Cake. Short Skirt/Long Jacket is similarly a satire about trying to be everything to everyone. They’re touring lightly and playing smaller venues, highly recommended.
Their rendition of “I will survive” is just fantastic. I’ve always loved the band.
My favorite thing about Cake (whom I like very much) is that the singer has cracked the longevity code of vocal delivery. Like, Bruce Dickinson had to whip out the autotune on the last Maiden record and I don’t know that Eddie Vedder has ever sounded the same after Vs, but ol’ John will sound EXACTLY like the record until the day he decides to hang up the vibraslap.
“…she traded her MG for a white Chrysler LeBaron” – why does everyone seem to assume it’s a convertible? Sure, Kitty/Karen doesn’t seem to be the landau top type but that doesn’t rule out the GTS liftback, preferably with blue velour interior.
Yes. However, it uses automotive metaphors as well.
An unsexy “poem” about sex.
Next up: “Italian Leather Sofa:”
In other news, that transition section of Paradise by the Dashboard Lights was in fact about baseball.
Not.
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Car websites are cool,
Sexy car poems are too.
That opening made me think of Albuquerque.
Way back when I was a little bitty boy
Livin’ in a box under the stairs in the corner of the basement of the house half a block down the street from Jerry’s bait shop
(You know the place)
….and now I’m gonna have all 11 minutes of that stuck in my head the rest of the day.
Well anyway life back then was going swell and everything was juuuuuust PEACHY!
Except of course for the undeniable fact that every single morning my mother would make be a big ol bowl of Nissan genuine CVT fluid for breakfast.
Dawww a BIG BOWL OF CVT FLUID. EVERY SINGLE MORNING.
It was drivin’ me crazy.
I said to my mom “Hey mom, what’s with all the CVT fluid?”
(And with that, I must attempt that sleep thing.)
And my dear sweet mother leaned in real close and said
IT’S GOOD FOR YOU!!!