A Response to Steve Scafidi’s “To Whoever Set My Truck on Fire”

The poem that was chosen as the heading for the first “playlist” (since we’re focusing on sound,music, etc.) of poems in the collection, “To Whoever Set My Truck on Fire” caught my attention after the utterance of its first line: “But let us be friends awhile and understand our differences”. After reading the title, I had assumed that the poem would begin with a spiteful, hate-filled voice, but instead it begins with reason. Of course, that’s not to say that the poem doesn’t eventually spiral downward in a flurry of emotions in which the voice once filled with reason is left with sweltering anger. But it wasn’t the voice that urged me to keep reading the poem; it was the format. A poem of 8 quintains (hopefully I’m using that term correctly) with one period and 8 commas is not for the faint of heart. The quintains and the white space between them would normally force readers to slow down, but the lack of punctuation creates a burst in speed that not only lends to the poem but to the dynamism of the voice/narrator on display. There is narrative here, most evident in the voice’s sudden awakening to their burning vehicle but also in the exposition that follows right up until the very end. But the poem is also lyrical because of its great lack of punctuation–there is a loss of air because of its wordiness; because of the space that it takes up on the page. The poem has its fallacies, especially towards the end when the speaker’s violent musings come to the surface; the lyricism and complexity lessens. I suppose I mention this piece because long-lined poems scare me, and the fact that Scafidi can pull off the technique confidently without a reasonable amount of punctuation makes me jealous. And to go even further than that, at the end of the day, my jealousy is simply another form of great admiration.

 

One Reply to “A Response to Steve Scafidi’s “To Whoever Set My Truck on Fire””

  1. Jason, I really like how you took the time to analyze the structure of this poem and how it contributes to the reader’s experience. Lack of punctuation is always a bold choice for poets and when a poet can pull it off successfully, it’s always worth congratulating. I think it says a lot about the underlying emotion of the character in the poem at the time, kind of fed up and overwhelmed while trying to remain reasonable.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.