Auto Wreck

a poem by Karl Shapiro
1. What imagery does Shapiro use in the first three lines to evoke sound and sight? How do these images become increasingly significant in the context of the entire poem?
Sharpio uses adjectives and verbs such as “quick soft silver…beating, beating,” “dark… ruby flare”, “pulsing… red” and a simile, “like an artery”, to describe this frantic scene.  The images become increasingly important as we continue to read and the poem learn more about event it describes; an auto wreck.

 2. On a literal level, what contextual significance do the following words and phrases have: mangled (line 9), “tolls once” (line 11), “terrible cargo” (line 12), “rocking, slightly rocking” (line 13), deranged and composed (lines 15 and 16)?
In line 9, mangled refers to the disheveled bodies from the accident. “Tolls once” refers to the sound of the ambulance as it leaves the scene. The “terrible cargo” is most likely the person inside the ambulance, struggling to survive. The ambulance then leaves almost in slow motion, “Rocking, slightly rocking”. The speaker says, “we are deranged, walking” describing his state of mind in response to the possible injuries or deaths he just witnessed. Contrarily, the cops  are “composed” just as they are supposed to be in these situations, and partially because they have become numb to instances such as this.

3. Analyze the metaphors in lines 3, 18, 22, 29-30. What pattern do they create and why is it appropriate to the poem?
The metaphor in line 3, “Pulsing out red light like and artery” describes the light of the ambulance coming closer through the dark; though as it references blood pulsing out through an artery, you think of injuries from the accident that it is racing towards. In line 18 the metaphor, “One with a bucket douches ponds of blood” refers to the police man washing away the exaggerated ponds of blood from the accident. Line 22 produces the metaphor, “Our throats were tight as tourniquets” comparing the feeling one gets when emotional to a tourniquet used to keep one from bleeding to death. Lastly Shapiro writes, “But we remain, touching a wound/ That opens to our richest horror.” Here the wound is a reference to the loss he and others experienced just a few minutes ago and richest horror the same; the sudden, seemly alterable, unnecessary death of a loved one. Because of this, they are unwilling to leave the scene, as if somehow by staying there a piece of what they have lost may be preserved- if only through the emotions that resurface over and over at the sight of the scene. The pattern created weaves death more tightly into the poem. It suggests bleeding to death and the dismay of the event.

4. What is added to the theme of the poem by the metaphors in lines 20-21 and the simile in 24-27?
The metaphor in lines 20-21 reads, “One hangs lanterns on the wrecks that cling,/ Empty husks of locusts, to iron poles.” Here Shapiro explains that the wrecks of the cars that cling to empty poles are similar to the husks of locusts; those once inside the cars have left this body with their death and passed on, just as locust larva emerge from cocoons once matured. This follows the belief of many basic religions, that once dead your soul leaves your body and moves on. The simile in lines 24-27,
“Like convalescents intimate and gauche
We speak through sickly smiles and warn
With stubborn saw of common sense,
The grim joke and the banal resolution.”
This comparison relates the witnesses to hospital patients, intimate due to their common experiences. Smiles are “sickly” due to the emotional trauma that makes them act as victims of the wreck as well. Their behavior is “gauche” as they tell inappropriate jokes to lighten the atmosphere. Their conversation is “banal” with the resolution to drive more safely. This event has materialized a fear of their own mortality and leads to the unspoken unanswerable questions.