Making Meanings
First Thoughts
1. What are the poets imagining in ” “Kidnap Poem,” and “Southbound on the Freeway”?
Shaping Interpretations
2. “Kidnap Poem” uses terms associated with writing, especially with poetry. See if you can find five nouns connected with writing and poetry that are used here as verbs.
3. “Kidnap Poem” is full of word tricks. Can you spot the puns in lines 11, 12, 13, and 19–20?
4. Red, black, and green are the colors of the black liberation flag, which originated with Marcus Garvey’s African-centered movement early in this century. How could knowing this fact add to your reading of line 16 in “Kidnap Poem”?
5. Who is the speaker of the poem “Southbound on the Freeway”?
6. Each detail in “Southbound on the Freeway” is a clue to the riddle. What is the “tourist” looking at? See if you can identify all the clues by completing these “equations”: guts = ; tapes = ; 5-eyed one = ; feet = ; eyes =
Connecting with the Texts
7. Suppose you are driving one of the cars southbound on the freeway. You look up and see this tourist parked in the air. Think of some figures of speech you’d use to describe this vision to your skeptical friends.
8. Look at what May Swenson said about cars and people below. How do you feel about her opinion?
May Swenson (1919–1989) said:
“‘Southbound on the Freeway’ makes you see, feel, and experience something before you know its name. That’s why neither the title nor the text specifically states what is being described. You discover the answer, solve the poem like a riddle, by reading it. Just as a visitor from a planet different from Earth could mistake our speeding cars for the inhabitants and might suppose the people in them to be guts or brains—so we, closely examining something for the first time, might reach imaginative conclusions—ones that contain kernels of symbolic truth. Once you discover what each poem is about, and name the subject for yourself, next you might notice what is hinted at beyond that: Haven’t cars in our world really become more conspicuous, more important than people?”
Born and brought up in Logan, Utah, Swenson often wrote about animal life and about the curiosities of human existence. Like E. E. Cummings, she sometimes used unusual forms and typographical patterns to shape her poems.
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