The poem
The story had a number of lines that were implying sexual activities. The lines “I held her and held her and held her, Convoyed at terrific speed By the stalled, dreaming traffic around us, So the blacksnake, stiff With Inaction, curved back Into life, and hunted out mouse” are definitely an implied description of sexual behavior that Doris and the male character were having. It definitely seemed like the two characters were having a hidden sexual relationship that they didn’t want others to know about. It was based primarily on sex and emotion, and not heartfelt feelings for each other. The thrill of this relationship seemed to be that they were not supposed to be seeing each other.
My favorite line of the poem was “Drunk on the wind in my mouth.” When I was thinking about this line it made me think of the way that the male character had handled himself throughout the poem. The poem started with anticipation and continuously built up excitement. Now the man has left after his exciting evening, and proud of the events that occurred. He is now riding his motorcycle down the road and feels as though his successful evening could not have been better.
9 comments:
I love it last week I did my blog on cherrylog road and suddenly everyone likes the poem. I like the straight fowardness of it also. You see symbols but they're easy to intrupt you don't have to dig out a textbook or search the internet for meanings. This and The Falling are by far my favorite Dickey pieces. I'm really glad that you enjoyed it too.
This poem definitely had a lot of sexual innuendo. It seems as though Dickey is suggesting that this is a major component of life because sexuality was a major theme of Falling that dealt, as this poem did, with seizing the moment and living fully. Dickey writes about living in the moment, as we discussed in class, and the male character in this poem, Doris, and the stewardess all do this in part by exploring sexuality. Men enjoying sex is sort of a well-known stereotype, but I find it interesting that Dickey also focuses on female sexuality. This aspect of his writing reminds me of Kate Chopin’s. Calixta was at least an equal participant in the sex she had with Alcée in Chopin’s The Storm, and Doris seems like an equally strong character. She schemes and creates a way to deceive her father by gathering bits and pieces from the junkyard in order to engage in illicit sexual relations there. Also like Calixta, Doris does not seem emotionally attached to her sexual partner but is also willing to leave separately, not trying to make the moment last longer that it naturally would. Doris, like the young man, seemingly just wants a sexual adventure. Dickey seems to celebrate this type of spontaneous living.
I agree that thi poem was one of the easiest to interpret because it was so straight forward. Even the emotions and feelings he used in the poem were just basic human emotion, there was no depth to the relationship. This poem reads more like a very short story or just a scene out of womeones day making it a lot easier (and slightly more enjoyable) to read.
I think after reading this poem in class I understand it a lot more. I do like the way Dickey came out and just was very interesting to see his writing technique describing two people trying to get together for a little "get together". What i really liked is the stereotypical "Red haired girl" Normally red hair is signified witht the south. I enjoyed how this was thrown in there. I also enjoyed that at the end both people go there seperate ways and then it is over.
The last quote that you mentioned went really well with the story itself. It starts of with anticipation then eds uo with excitment good anology. This poem did have some sexual reference to it. But that is vey typical of Dickey. In my opinion the title has nothing to do with the actual poem.
The last quote that you mentioned went really well with the story itself. It starts of with anticipation then eds uo with excitment good anology. This poem did have some sexual reference to it. But that is vey typical of Dickey. In my opinion the title has nothing to do with the actual poem.
I enjoyed Cherrylog Road for similar reasons. Dickey is straight forward with this poem and I understood what it was about before we went over it in class. Many of Dickey's poems contain sexual information and he puts it right out there. However, this poem didn't contain as much content of a sexual experience. You knew that the two characters were engaged in sexual activity, but it was brief, and not very descriptive. I mean, there is a lot surounding this scene and he is descriptive in that aspect.
What I noticed about this poem was that Doris Holbrook was not the typical Southern Belle stereotype that we have been reading about. In fact, she seems a little more "white trash-ish" to me. I had pictured her father as a redneck, in every sense of the word. And here she is, having a one-night stand with this man. (Perhaps their relationship was longer.) But anyway, there was no passion, no exchange of words, and no mention of any feelings. They met in a junkyard, for God sakes! In any event, I still enjoyed this poem.
I also liked that this poem did not require a lot of effort in interpreting to understand. I feel like before we went over it in class I knew what was going on. However, I was looking for some underlying meaning because I was sure I could not be that simple, but I guess I was wrong.
The two characters do appear to be involved in some sort of unacceptable sexual relationship. I would not say that there were any emotions involved. I think that there were no emotions involved because before Doris even went to see the guy she was looking for things to take home. It seems like if she was in love with him she would have gone straight to see him, not dig around a junkyard first. The guy also seemed very free and happy once he left her. Usually in poems about love and emotions, fleeting is a sad thing. Here however, they were celebrating this freedom.
Since I haven't read everyone's blogs I probably shouldn't say this in the way I'm going to, but oh well.
I'm so glad someone finally just came out and said. Dickey wrote about sex, and it's NORMAL. He writes about living, death, and sex and those are all part of the life cycle. I'm happy that someone can just talk about it openly and not be ashamed that cherrylog road was about getting it on in an abandoned junkyard, in an old broken down car.
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