03-15-2025, 12:40 PM
This is my first critique post, so please bear with me. My favourite line of the poem is “you reach the mile they autopsy your corpse “. I think the pairing the idea of travel ending in death (autopsy) was creative. I found parts of the first stanza challenging. You use the word “still” three times which becomes unnecessarily repetitive. It seems that you are talking about someone who is unhappy and drinking so I found the word “yet” in the phrase “yet more bottles….” Removing the word yet makes the meaning clearer to me- saying yet seems like it is a surprise rather than an expected consequence of being unhappy.
An additional note, as a reader I am stuck on the phrase “you drive hours inside a truck “. On the first few reads I thought it might refer to a truck driven for work. After a few more reads I was wondering if it was someone driving aimlessly in their own truck- looking for something, driving aimlessly, looking for death. I really want to know if you mean “driving in your truck “ or “driving your rig/delivery truck “. I think knowing the role of the truck changes how that stanza is interpreted.
I looked up references to plane crashes and September, I am assuming you are referring to 9/11. Very powerful reference in the context of the poem - it is more than unhappiness. Good job.
An additional note, as a reader I am stuck on the phrase “you drive hours inside a truck “. On the first few reads I thought it might refer to a truck driven for work. After a few more reads I was wondering if it was someone driving aimlessly in their own truck- looking for something, driving aimlessly, looking for death. I really want to know if you mean “driving in your truck “ or “driving your rig/delivery truck “. I think knowing the role of the truck changes how that stanza is interpreted.
I looked up references to plane crashes and September, I am assuming you are referring to 9/11. Very powerful reference in the context of the poem - it is more than unhappiness. Good job.