"It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted.
The only things moving are swirls of snow.
As I lift the mailbox door, I feel its cold iron.
There is a privacy I love in this snowy night.
Driving around, I will waste more time."
The poem "Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter" is a beautiful short one that depicts a single, simple action of mailing a letter. Although it is a short poem, it still brings many daily life images through beautifully crafted end-stopped lines, from a single speaker or narrator point of view. Tony Hoagland, in his article published by "The American Poetry Review", The Village Troublemaker, refers to this poem and the book in which it was published, as having an atmosphere of solitude, privacy and intimacy. (44). The poem indeed accomplishes that, masterfully.
The author, Robert Bly, was born in the very cold Minnesota state. He sure knows about cold, snow and long nights, and how do they feel. This poem describes a scene and actions of a world he would have seeing many times during his early life. It describes how mundane, earthly things, can be meaningful. Bly uses a very descriptive imagery to slowly immerse the reader into the peaceful wonders of the natural world. His world.
The fist sentences of the poem set the scene, and the result is powerful. "It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted." (1, 2) creates a vivid and accessible scene to the reader. The following sentence sets a tone of emptiness but solitude at the same time. "The only things moving are swirls of snow." (3) places a strong emphasis on such emptiness and desolation and, in a way, the reader's imagination is frozen on this empty, lonely, yet peaceful scene.
Bly continues by conveying a perception of touch, when he writes "As I lift the mailbox door, I feel its cold iron." (4) on the fourth sentence. Describing what the narrator feels, physically, creates the same consciousness on the reader. If the first two sentences bring forward the reader's inner world of perception and thoughts, the third concentrates on transmitting material awareness, making the reader feel the coldness of what is to be assumed a thick, casted iron, mailbox door.
On the fourth sentence, Bly's tone changes, as the narrator describes how all the previous imagery make him feel, emotionally. "There is a privacy I love in this snowy night" (5) reveals that, no matter how desolated and completely empty a winter night might be, or how cold could it feel, the narrator enjoys the privacy it brings. "It is not bad, after all," we hear. Yet, the last sentence pretends to make that feeling worthless when he writes "Driving around, I will waste more time." (6). The accomplished tone conveyed by the love for privacy the snowy night presents is overshadowed by the sentiment of wasting time. Suggesting that driving around in a snowy, dark night is a waste of time is indeed negated by the previous sentence and, hence, ironic. It is not fruitless, it is not a waste. It simply brings the privacy he enjoys, he loves, while enjoying a beautiful winter night.
It is not hard to imagine that Bly could be simply describing, albeit in a very captivating way, a mundane task he himself had to carry out often while living on the upper Midwest. He excels at communicating the peaceful feeling, the privacy he got from the empty cold night, and how much he enjoyed it.
Works Cited
"A Short Biography of Robert Bly." A Short Biography of Robert Bly. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 May 2014.
Bly, Robert. "Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter" ENGL200: Composition and Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011: 238. Web. Retrieved 29 April 2014.
Hoagland, Tony. "The Village Troublemaker." The American Poetry Review Sep 2011: 43-8. ProQuest. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.