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Road Trip
I ride the countryside for you my friend.
The white and yellow lines can’t separate
The dots I will connect at this trip’s end.
With spinning force that pushes on the bend
Until the highway comes out smooth and straight,
I ride the countryside for you my friend.
Before I get there I can’t comprehend
Just how our meeting will illuminate
The dots I will connect at this trip’s end.
Although vast swaths of nameless land may rend
Our lives in two, each one a foreign state,
I ride the countryside for you my friend.
Once eyes can meet our purposes will blend
And different as we are we may relate
The dots I will connect at this trip’s end.
A flying needle sent with speed to mend
Through unseen spaces overlapped by fate,
I ride the countryside for you my friend—
The dots I will connect at this trip’s end.
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Evan Mantyk teaches literature and history in New York and is President of the Society of Classical Poets.
This is really nicely done, Evan. It really works for me.
Probably, I listen to too much pop music, but your poem reminded me of some lines from a Neil Young song (Good to See You):
I’ve been down the endless highway
I’ve passed on the solid line
Now at last I’m home to you
I feel like making up for lost time
Thank you, Paul! I was going for a more musical feeling with this one. I was not aware of this song.
I enjoyed your Villanelle too, Evan. I would love
a “road trip” somewhere distant so the title drew
me right in. I hope the trip was as successful as
the poem.
The trip was a mixed bag. Most importantly, I composed this while driving and it kept me sharp and awake duing the long hours on the road.
I’m really impressed, Evan, at how the repeating lines acquire depth as the villanelle proceeds to its destination. You go with great economy from the geography of the trip through the intellectual implications of the meeting to a sense of schism to the spiritual hope for potential reconciliation. It’s really quite beautiful. You once said that a good villanelle should impart the sense of having taken the reader on a journey. Now I understand. Yours gives a great sense of forward motion and emotional deepening.
Thank you, Brian! I haven’t written many villanelles, but among those this is certainly my best one I think.
Sublimely written and beautiful to read. This could be the perfect song on a dead straight highway, preferably with the wipers on, and sung by Johnny Cash, God bless him. Well done Evan, this is great.
Thank you, Jeff!
Great Villanelle, Evan. Thanks for the read.
Thank you, Paul!
This is an excellent villanelle on a simple and straightforward subject. Indeed, since the villanelle as a medieval form takes its origin from song, it is best when its subject matter is clear and uncomplicated. The choice of the rhymes (–end and –ate) is also wise, for those two sounds provide a legion of possible words in English.
Especially good is the line “A flying needle sent with speed to mend…” This is what one of my teachers called “a winking metaphor” that can refer to two possible things: in this case, the indication needle on the car’s speedometer, or the car itself speeding along the highway.
Very beautiful and thought provoking. Thank You.
I read a third meaning in the “flying needle,” beyond the two Joseph Salemi has seen. The needle stands in apposition to “I,” and thus the driver/rider is the needle “sent with speed to mend” the two lives which have been rent by vast swaths of nameless land in the fourth stanza. In other words, the needle person speeds to his destination in order to perform sewing work that will mend the separation by which two lives have been torn. The planned pattern for his stitching is the “dots I will connect at this trip’s end.” Well thought out, Evan, and if this is a real journey, I hope the reconciliation is as well sewn and finished as the villanelle.
Yes, that seems plausible as well. The verb “mend” is the evidence for it, though the comparison isn’t carried forward by more sewing references. To strengthen it, the poet could change the next line to “The rips and slashes overlapped by fate.”
Thank Margaret and Joseph for your comments! Yes, the idea, among others, was a needle mending with the overlapping of fabric.
I had meant to mention this earlier! Further support in the poem for the idea of sewing is the “lines” and “dots” possibly referring to a printed pattern for making clothes. Most paper patterns have a solid line (like the white ones on the sides of the road in the illustration) to indicate where to cut the fabric. A little inside these solid lines are dashed or dotted lines (like the yellow dashes in the illustration) showing where the needle should sew to form the seam, and leaving a small seam allowance where the two pieces of fabric overlap. I have usually used pattern brands with dashes as the sewing line, but I think I recall that the most expensive Vogue brand uses dots!
What I particularly enjoyed about this was how the connections between each successive line had to be examined closely. Close examination shows that the repetends take on slightly different meanings and present slightly different implications with each iteration. This is one of the techniques that keeps the form dynamic. There are few things worse than a static villanelle.
Thank you, Kip. I was in part inspired by your well wrought villanelles, which I have learned from.
Evan, I love a good villanelle and the repetition in this fine poem is used to wonderful effect – the tediousness of a long journey, the thoughts along the way, the anticipation of how it will go, and what the future may bring. I really want those dots connected… the repeating lines of this villanelle scream out for ‘Road Trip 2 – Reflections’. I can’t wait! 😉
Thank you, Susan!
An excellent villanelle. Each tercet not only has its own imagery, but flows fluidly with connection to the next, and the last line “the dots” secure a powerful connection to the whole. Clever and intriguing read, one enjoyed reading over. G.
Evan, I think you have given us a great deal within the six stanzas of a villanelle. There is the journey itself, a sense of anticipation, an uncertainty of outcome, and the intended coming together of friends under a common purpose. The white and yellow lines of the highway pair up perfectly with the aim of connecting dots upon reaching your destination.
Besides the beauty of your Villanelle, I personally identified with your road trip that perfectly portrayed one I made in my senior years to pick up someone I knew in high school fifty years ago and married late in life. My trip was from Arizona to Houston and back. In a sense, the one I met was the “flying needle” that did the mending of my heart.
Fab villanelle Evan – love it!
Evan, this is a wonderfully penned villanelle with each of the five tercets
offering a unique set of images (lines, speed, dots, friend/lover, meeting of the eyes, etc.) that significantly contribute to the “trip’s end” in the final quatrain.
What about “just how” or “the way” or something similar for L8 to keep it within the parameters of decasyllabic verse?
A great read, especially considering the villanelle is such a very difficult form to master. I loved it. 🙂
Thank you, Tamara! Fixed.