Car Graveyard by Charles Simic
This is where all our joy rides ended:
Our fathers at the wheel, our mothers
With picnic baskets on their knees
As we sat in the back with our mouths open.
We were driving straight into the sunrise.
The country was flat. A city rose before us,
Its windows burning with the setting sun
That vanished as we quit the highway
And rolled down a dusky meadow
Strewn with beer cans and candy wrappers,
Till we came to a stop beside an old Ford.
First, the radio preacher lost his voice
Then our four tyres went flat.
The springs popped out of the upholstery
Like a nest of rattlesnakes,
As we tried to remain calm.
Later that night we heard giggles
Out of a junked hearse – then, not a peep
Till the day of the Resurrection.
Hello and welcome to Words That Burn, the podcast taking a closer look at poetry. This is a bit of a sadder podcast as the poet of this week’s episode, Charles Simic, passed away quite recently on the 9th of January. Charles Simic was an utterly unique Serbian- American poet. His poetry was known for its evocative visual style and its often acerbic wit. He drew much of his inspiration from his childhood experiences growing up in Serbia, where he was exposed to the violence and turmoil of World War 2. He was famously quoted as saying: ‘’My travel agents were Hitler and Stalin. Being one of the millions of displaced persons made an impression on me’’ (Spalding 1998)
That displaced voice was well honed as a result of his forced emigration from his home country. Simic's journey from Serbia to the United States has had a profound impact on his work. His poems often contain themes of violence and conflict, as well as a sense of alienation. Despite this, his poetry also contains a deep sense of hope, which he found through the power of language and the beauty of his adopted homeland, America.
I chose this poem as I feel it encompasses all that alienation, adaptation and hope in one single piece of verse. I realise the inclusion of graveyard is a little on the nose but I promise that is not the only reason it was chosen.
The car graveyard itself is an unusual image but Simic's work always explored the intersection between poetry and visual art. Academic Siobhan Scarry argues that Simic's use of objects in his poetry reveals his unique perspective on the world and his ability to find beauty in even the most mundane of objects (Scarry, 2004). His use of objects in his poetry allows him to express obscure feelings more effectively by using a concrete object as a base to provide a sense of comfort and familiarity. Many of his poems are written around visually striking objects as here with the car graveyard.
The car graveyard here acts as a profound metaphor for aging, hardship and death. Car graveyards are exactly what they say on the tin: huge spaces filled with broken and abandoned cars (Wikipedia, n.d.). In choosing such a non-human symbol of death, Simic side steps the severity and grimness of human death and so is free to explore the topic without falling to moroseness.
It serves a double function though. It's no secret that Simic took to his adopted country with aplomb, often waxing lyrical about the United States and its inherent vibrancy by comparison to Europe. (Ford 2005) Once asked if it was love at first sight he replied:
It was an astonishing sight . Europe was so gray and New York was so bright; there were so many colors, the advertisements, the yellow taxicabs. America was only five days away by ship, but it felt as distant as China does today. European cities are like operatic stage sets. New York looked like painted sets in a sideshow at a carnival where the bearded lady, sword- swallowers, snake charmers, and magicians make their appearances. (Ford 2005)
But these were the impressions of a much younger man and over time Simic became more familiar with the more realistic side of the U.S coming to understand that the American dream was just that: a dream.
And so the notion of a car graveyard, filled with American classics; the Chevrolet, the Cadillac, the Charger becomes the perfect vehicle for Charting its decline.
It's clear from the first stanza:
This is where all our joy rides ended:
Our fathers at the wheel, our mothers
With picnic baskets on their knees
As we sat in the back with our mouths open.
That opening line is incredibly final for a first line. It leaves us in doubt as to the theme of this poem; something has ended, what exactly that is is unclear but it's over.
There's an interesting use our for both fathers and mothers and those parental figures are transformed into communal symbols of sorts and we realise that the speaker of Simic's poem is addressing all of us. An ending for the masses is revealed then.
From there Simic uses typical imagery from the American Nuclear Family. (Cantor 2009)
The picnic baskets and sleeping children are something plucked straight from a painting by Norman Rockwell. These combined images conjure something distinctly American for the reader. It is idyllic and it is American pastoral. Why Simic would choose such an image is revealed to us with the second stanza:
We were driving straight into the sunrise.
The country was flat. A city rose before us,
Its windows burning with the setting sun
That vanished as we quit the highway
And rolled down a dusky meadow
Strewn with beer cans and candy wrappers,
Till we came to a stop beside an old Ford.
We open with words that evoke optimism and ease; The country was flat. A city rose before us. To me these words evoke Ronald Regans’s famous adage of ‘’America is a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.’’ (Ford 2005). It became a refrain in the president's career and served as a kind of rejuvenation of the American Dream, which by the 1980’s needed a new lick of paint. Interestingly it was derived originally from a 17th century Puritan sermon (Ford 2005) and is not the only use of religious imagery by Simic.
This potential reference to a famous political speech combined with the Americana from the previous stanza show us that Simic is looking, not only at an ending but the American Dream as well.
The lines of this section are all at once idealised and yet oddly sinister, at least to me. The sunrise they are aimed towards is a distinctly hopeful note. Emerging from the darkness into something better.
If we lean on a biographical reading, there's an easy parallel here between this American highway and Simic's own escape from a war torn Europe. In a sense this is Simic's American dream. The consistent use of the collective pronoun reminds us that they were not the only ones banking on this hopeful sunrise.
This reading is further backed by the oddly ominous use of the phrase burning windows. A clear reference to the horror of war that ravaged Europe during World War Two. Simic admitted in an interview that damaged windows had become something of a symbol of the war for him personally. He once stated in an interview that:
Broken windows-I saw a lot of broken windows in my life because of the bombings.…There were a lot of ruins of buildings that were bombed, and I played in some of them with my friends. It was terrific climbing up and down. (Forhan 2009).
Those effigies to his childhood vanished as we quit the highway. They were able to stop running, fleeing from their home.
The Idyllic returns once again, as our car full of dream chasers find their way to a dusky meadow . It’s interesting to note however, that it is not perfect, it is strewn with beer cans and candy wrappers. Our first hint that this American Dream may not be all that it seems. This rubbish echoes Simic’s quote from earlier in the episode when he said America ‘’like painted sets in a sideshow at a carnival. The objects littered about the place are a reminder that there are tarnishes to every image.
The final image of this stanza, drives that sense of Americana home; we came to a stop beside an old Ford. In the 1950’s the ford car became a bizarre cornerstone of American Identity. In a 1951 article in American sociologist Nelson N Foote argued that the Ford Model T had a profound impact on American identity. Foote asserted that the Ford Model T was an early symbol of a new American identity, one of increased individual freedom and mobility. He argued that the Ford Model T allowed people to travel further than ever before and in doing so, changed the way Americans related to one another and the world around them. The car became a symbol of the expanding American dream. (Foote 1951).
I don’t think this is an accidental image choice. Charles Simic was a man who studied American culture very closely in all aspects and was certainly not blinded by his love for his adopted home. He frequently spoke out against the violence committed by the United States in the middle east. (Forhan 2009). There is another, more subtle, criticism at play with the introduction of the ford. Simic calls it an old ford as though it is outdated and past its prime, perhaps the same way in which he now views the once expanding American Dream.
That concept of a fading dream finds more concrete footing in the final stanza:
First, the radio preacher lost his voice
Then our four tyres went flat.
The springs popped out of the upholstery
Like a nest of rattlesnakes,
As we tried to remain calm.
Later that night we heard giggles
Out of a junked hearse – then, not a peep
Till the day of the Resurrection.
Another symbol of America is introduced; the radio preacher. This one is admittedly a little more southern gothic, existing in the time of revivals and early radio in the deep south but it is as much Americana as the ford is. Here, however, the vim and vigor that once bolstered his voice is gone. The zeal of America hoarse with it.
Now the warm bastion of the nuclear family from earlier in the poem; the car suddenly finds itself with four tyres flat. The hope that had carried them towards a sunrise has run out of steam. Indeed over the next few lines, all of the car becomes a symbol for that collapsed optimism. The copious symbols of Americana become twisted and warped.
It’s a marvel that Simic’s very economic prose still manages to evoke powerful sharp images, we can almost picture the upholstery tearing. They turn into a much more sinister symbol of the United States; The Rattlesnake.
A true note of panic injects itself into the poem here; we tried to remain calm. Something is very wrong in the world of the poem. It’s a good idea to return to the biographical reading here as what we are witnessing in this final stanza is a very abstract retelling of the misfortune that befell Simic’s family in the wake of their arrival to America. Shortly after his mother arrived and was reunited with his father their marriage dissolved. (Ford 2005) You can imagine as a young person that you might feel your world is ending when divorce comes along. It might even feel like your joyride was over.
After that the final lines of the poem become truly poetic. The occupants of the car have found themselves part of the car graveyard. Their own vehicle having failed them. They seem stuck there in the ruins of their own dream. The car graveyard takes on a whole new meaning. Here are fords and cars, once proud symbols of America’s prowess and wealth turning to rust slowly.
It is the death of both Simic’s own nuclear family and of the proud prosperous future.
Here a strange echo of the past greets our speakers' ears; later that night we heard giggles out of a junked hearse; then, not a peep.
I’ve read these lines a few times and tried to come up with a clear interpretation, failing each time, so I’ll give you my best theory. This was a much more personal poem and that the collective pronouns Simic used at the beginning actually refers to himself and his brother. This is the end of their childhood, a strange death rattle of sorts . The giggles are those of two boys playing the waste of the Car Graveyard, a hearse no less, much like they did when they were younger playing in the wastes of their war torn city. The end of the particular trip, where all their joyrides ended, is the time when reality finally ended the escape that play had brought.
The final line Till the day of the Resurrection adds a block of finality to the entire poem. There was no coming back from this.
This is not the first time that Simic looked at America in terms of a road. His poem “American Poetry”, uses similar imagery of a road to symbolize the journey of America and its people, showing both the beauty and tragedy of the country. (Forhan 2009) What is different this time is the deeply personal undercurrent that drives the narrative. On the one hand it is the American Dream that is on trial in this poem but on a much deeper level it is reckoning with the mundane and the grim reality that lies at the heart of it.
That grim reality is precisely the same as the one we are left with in the wake of Charles Simic’s passing. He passed away on the 9th of January this year. I hope to have shown you just a small glimpse into the incredible poetry he managed to create and there is so much more where that came from. I’ve included a few links to my favourites below in the description.
I could try to encompass all that Charles Simic was but I think Librarian of Congress James H. Billington put it eloquently, when on the appointment of Simic as the 15th poet Laureate of the United States, he said:
The range of Charles Simic’s imagination is evident in his stunning and unusual imagery. He handles language with the skill of a master craftsman, yet his poems are easily accessible, often meditative and surprising. He has given us a rich body of highly organized poetry with shades of darkness and flashes of ironic humor. (Poets.org, n.d.)
His passing is truly the end of a joyride.
Works Cited
Cantor, Muriel G. “Prime‐time fathers: A study in continuity and change.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, vol. 7, no. 3, 2009, pp. 275-285, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15295039009360179.
Foote, Nelson N. “Identification as the Basis for a Theory of Motivation.” American Sociological Review, vol. 16, no. 1, 1951, pp. 14-21. Jstor, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2087964.
Ford, Mark. “Charles Simic, The Art of Poetry No. 90.” The Paris Review, 2005, https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5507/the-art-of-poetry-no-90-charles-simic. Accessed 24 January 2023.
Forhan, Chirs. “A Conversation with Charles Simic.” Booth, vol. 1, no. 1, 2009, Article 3, https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/booth/vol1/iss1/3/.
Frum, David. “Is America Still the 'Shining City on a Hill'?” The Atlantic, 1 January 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/is-america-still-the-shining-city-on-a-hill/617474/. Accessed 24 January 2023.
Poetry Foundation. “Charles Simic.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/charles-simic. Accessed 10 January 2023.
Poets.org. “About Charles Simic | Academy of American Poets.” Poets.org, https://poets.org/poet/charles-simic#poet__works. Accessed 24 January 2023.
Scarry, Siobhan. “"World of objects| The poetics of Charles Simic" by Siobhan Scarry.” ScholarWorks at University of Montana, 2004, https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/4113/. Accessed 24 January 2023.
Spalding, J.M. “Charles Simic: A Profile.” Cortland Review, 1998, https://web.archive.org/web/20200727214255/http://www.cortlandreview.com/issuefour/interview4.htm.
Wikipedia. “Automobile graveyard.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_graveyard. Accessed 24 January 2023.