17 pages • 34 minutes read
Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter
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Poem Analysis
Analysis: “Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter”
In the documentary, A Thousand Years of Joy, Robert Bly explains that the landscape of rural Minnesota—particularly the copious snow it receives—was an inspiration for his largely autobiographical debut collection, Silence in the Snowy Fields (1962), which contains “Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter.” The poem’s lack of complicated rhyme and meter and its down-to-earth diction make it accessible to a wide audience. However, Bly’s use of imagery goes deeper than what appears on the surface. The implied imagery is as important as the literal imagery—a technique Bly is famous for employing. It is through the implications that the poem gains meaning and moves beyond just a quaint observation of a “cold and snowy night” (Line 1). The poem is included in a section of the collection called “Awakenings,” and contains what seems to be an epiphany, or realization, for the speaker near the end. They wake up to the fact that “privacy” (Line 4) is a state they “love” (Line 4).
The title is a crucial element of the poem as it reports the essential facts: who (speaker), what ( Plus, gain access to 8,550+ more expert-written Study Guides. Including features:
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