Decades ago, when I first came stateside, & was catching up studying the collected works of mostly great American poets I had only heard about, since I didn’t have access to their books in Zimbabwe, one of the poems I stumbled upon in an anthology, pre-internet, & liked a lot, was William Stafford’s very American Traveling Through The Dark – since all across this nation roads such scenarios are quite numerous. Myself, then, an idealistic, young but naïve poet who had a handful of decent to good poems under my wing – & having written for less than five years, I simply lacked the technical competencies, poetic instincts & wisdom to see the glaring flaws inherent in it.
Now let me be brutally honest – no matter what you’ve read, heard or seen elsewhere this isn’t a great poem, nor is it even near-great! At best it’s a solid &/or good poem but what prevents it from greatness of, say, W.B. Yeat’s Leda And The Swan is its documentary style which, in the hands of a lesser poet, leaves little room to expand on its themes, its clunkiness, repetitive verbosity & William Stafford’s need to explain then overstate instead of trusting the reader to make their own quick connections by just giving us the necessary facts succinctly, efficiently & in the right sequence, so the words heighten each other in their setups into that purview of poetry not prose. Also, there’s no sustained vigor which is a by-product of brevity & being bold with the materials at hand. Yes, as poets we often love words excessively to our own detriment in their use so I’d advise to only love them to the same extent you’re willing to ruthlessly cut them, if need be. While I like the English language – I come to it as a second language so I’ve no qualms editing it rigorously. Tellingly, in this short video Stafford explains how it came about, his not knowing how to finish it, but upon taking it to a writers’ group & noticing their reaction to his reading of it, wisely stuck to his ending, yet unfortunately in the same breath, gave up revising it anymore. Then, he sent it off for publication, into this its famous but overwrought version – I no longer objectively like, at 157 words:
Traveling Through The Dark
Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.
My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.
The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.
I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—
then pushed her over the edge into the river.
Without further ado, this is what it’d have been at 113 compact words with no fat:
Edged, On Wilson River Rd
Traveling through the dark I found a dead doe,
big-bellied, edged on narrow Wilson River Road;
usually, it’s best to roll them into the canyon,
to swerve might make more dead.
[THE SETUP, SCENARIO, & 1st DILEMMA; FORESHADOWS END]
By my car’s taillight glow, I stumbled back of it
& stood by the rigor mortis heap, then dragged
her off; my fingers fondling her side brought
me reason why ‘twas warm: her fawn waited—
[THE ATTEMPT AT RESOLUTION, BUT FURTHER COMPLICATED BY GREATER 2nd DILEMMA]
still, to be born. Beside that mountain road,
parking lights plowed ahead, engine purring,
in glare of an exhaust, turning red, I hesitated
around our group, hearing the wilderness listen…
[CONTEMPLATIVE BRIEF INDECISIVENESS WITH 3rd DILEMA OF NATURE SEEMINGLY IN ON HOW TO TREAT ITS OWN?]
Thinking hard for us all—my only swerving—
I shoved her over the edge into the river.
[BRUTAL FATAL RESOLUTION]
That’s right – it’d have been a great American sonnet from the get-go, able to compete across the board with other sonnets like the Yeats one I mentioned earlier or Robert Hayden’s Those Winter Sundays, but Stafford as he admitted gave in to that weakness & laziness, of no further revisions. Any wannabe or struggling poet who has the ruthless creative ego, hardcore talent, daily discipline, expansive imagination & stoic wherewithal over the likely decades it shall take to be great, & then in that greatness inch by degrees into higher levels of it (think as a poets’ poet like a James A. Emanuel, Hart Crane or Wallace Stevens) owes it to oneself to master writing sonnets for their various forms teach much. For starters, the sonnet forces you to gain exquisite control of every line – since in a mere 14 lines there’s no room for waffling, there’s a greater propensity for better line breaks that increase duplicity of meanings; you learn to be able to crystallize your ideation or reveal your lack thereof, such that you can see more easily if you’re overwriting or don’t have enough to cover 14 substantive lines, & can maximize turns in phrasing – not only necessarily in its patented volta or from its initial setup, but specifically within each line &, of course, to present a concise compelling narrative. Haven’t any of you poetry lovers noticed mostly all the great poets have mastered sonnets & no, I wasn’t even thinking of Shakespeare who wrote a handful of great ones? It begs the question, then – can one even call themselves a POET if they can’t write sonnets consistently well? I can only recall the late great Mina Loy not writing sonnets, even in her uncollected poems, as one going against that notion. But now onto why my edited version is superior to Stafford’s original, though I’ll not tackle every nuance since I trust your intelligence to figure out why something works better.
My title though repeated (somewhat) towards the end of line 2 could refer to more than the doe’s locale on that road, as it includes also the narrator/traveler, & later in the third quatrain – the wilderness itself (‘our group’). Notice how details of the deer being a pregnant doe, & recently deceased in being pushed up & concentrated give more weight & resolution to the first 2 quatrains now trimmed from Stafford’s verbosity, sets up the boffo couplet, nicely. That this standalone line ‘…to swerve might make more dead,’ isn’t impeded by the sluggishness of – ‘that road is narrow,’ ends that quatrain more powerfully. Ask yourself: do the slant rhymes in each quatrain now heighten from the original’s redundancies? What of this line? ‘…her fawn waited – / still, to be born.’ Look how mine says what the original expressed in more words but the former also has other (graphic) meanings, since with decomposition, for starters, the doe’s womb gases will inevitably ‘stillborn’ its fawn. ‘Fondling’ versus ‘touching’ is a more specifically delicate way of the latter, just as ‘shoved’ is a better more forceful word choice than ‘pushed’ emphasizing back the title’s ‘Edged, on..” ‘Plowed’ versus ‘lowered’ gives a better image, especially at night where this poem seems to occur. That phrase ‘turning red’ in my different more strategic placement of it can refer to both ‘in glare of an exhaust,…’ & also what follows in ‘I hesitated / around our group…’ that many might miss: the narrator having known initially what must be always done with any dead deer found in that narrow, therefore dangerous section of the road (line 3) is also ‘turning red’ in his hesitant anticipation of what must be bloodily done. Can you see how there can be a third meaning to ‘turning red’ – probably its most hidden? When you delay the narrator’s hesitation & instead have it closer to ‘around our group, hearing the wilderness listen,’ the previous catalogue of actions in their crescendo create a nice ‘hesitant’ beat that again not only set up the couplet, but give a different tempo/musicality from the first 2 quatrains. Again no energy or vigor is lost in quatrain 3 (which is my favorite), for as a matter of fact it increases towards the grim resolution. The 2 beginning parts of my couplet ‘Thinking hard…/ I shoved her…’ are more powerful since the first part is in line with the more open third person of the previous quatrain’s ‘our group’ & ‘the wilderness’ & ‘for us all’ plus it’s more actively intimate his shoving her – without that ‘then’ that’s redundant (like earlier ‘that road is narrow…’ was) & since it’s obvious his thinking hard had him now pushing hard (=shoved) thus a cleaner, meaner mirroring. This is what greatness in poems does, it piles on meanings upon meanings or ideas so each reading of the same poem entertains more so.
Now I’ve to stress my ellipses use in the third quatrain’s end in ‘wilderness listen…’ matters for most poets tend not to use this little but also big grammatical technique, which can be quite effective, in specific places. Ellipses are a sophisticated way of affecting the tone of what comes before, or after, in a line & hence can mean several things, namely: they can represent a trail-off into silence which both versions obviously needed – but William Stafford’s lacks. They demand that a reader slows down (& why do you think that’s necessary in the context of both poems, before the end?). They emphasize a point, namely a pause, or unfinished thought & – get this – also a hesitation! Now are you seeing why I used them, how just those 3 little spaced dots/full stops heightened my version & why Stafford never maximized what he had? Stafford never pushed himself in this poem or countless others for had he done so it’d have opened up other possibilities in his work, but unfortunately that’s the lives of most poets: they write poems to simply express themselves, not to convey ideas well. In closing, with 2 slight tweaks in the first line & the addition of ‘again’ as the very last word, look what (else) we can nightmarishly have, but you be the judges. This is what mastering sonnets does – it gets you to places you never imagined when initially you set out, & only in a mere 14 lines, but in great sonnets those can be an entire lifetime:
Edged, On Wilson River Rd
Traveling through a dark I found the dead doe,
big-bellied, edged on narrow Wilson River Road;
usually, it’s best to roll them into the canyon,
to swerve might make more dead.
By my car’s taillight glow, I stumbled back of it
& stood by the rigor mortis heap, then dragged
her off; my fingers fondling her side brought
me reason why ‘twas warm: her fawn waited—
still, to be born. Beside that mountain road,
parking lights plowed ahead, engine purring,
in glare of an exhaust, turning red, I hesitated
around our group, hearing the wilderness listen…
Thinking hard for us all—my only swerving—
I shoved her over the edge into the river, again.
* * *
If you enjoyed Whinza Ndoro’s analysis and revision of William Stafford’s “Traveling Through the Dark”, consider supporting us and get patron-only content on our Patreon page. This will help the growth of this site, the automachination YouTube channel, and the ArtiFact Podcast. Recent episodes include a dissection of Barack Obama’s cultural legacy with Holocaust scholar Norman Finkelstein, a discussion with political scientist Benjamin Studebaker on the chronic crisis of American democracy, and a review of bad art-centered YouTube channels.