ROAD WORK

I’ve spent a lot of my life behind a steering wheel, and that’s where a number of my poems originate.

From this, I can look at a concept. Lines from the road. Basho? Brautigan? McCord?

Flight or escape remains a central theme in American literature. Kerouac’s On the Road and Hunter Thompson come to mind, along with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Blue Highways. Of course our two greatest American novels also reflect this action, often with its male bonding and fields of discovery – Moby Dick and Huckleberry Finn. It’s not just some vague sense of the liberty of a frontier to resettle, but with wheels, there’s the thrill of speed more destructive than hiking or canoeing or sailing. As for hobos and the rails? Another era. Outlaws more than vagabonds? As for the Gypsy, there’s an entire community to consider. As well as flights with a destination, in contrast to those lacking.

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