WEBVTT

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This poem is called
"Driving Gloves."

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And it refers to a kind
of personal mythology

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that I have about Americans
and their relationship

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to the automobile, which I
hinted at in "Hitchhikers,"

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the first poem I read.

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The fact that perhaps the
only act of meditation

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that the average
American permits himself

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is driving alone in his car.

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And, oh, I suppose you can
look at it as a very desperate

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situation as I saw the
desperation of the Honolulu

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gorilla with his television
set and his poor beaten up wife

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on her waterbed.

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Instead, I do see
some kind of hope

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in this image of the
automobile as a creation

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where the average American
man permits himself

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a life of philosophy
and meditation,

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and for me, is a symbol
that the world of technology

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does not have to deny
us our individuality

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or in fact, all the virtues
of those individual arts

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like philosophy.

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This poem is dedicated
to Anne Winters.

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Driving gloves.

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I wish my past had
been a volcano,

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spewing me out on a shower
of hot sparks, but it wasn't.

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I came from a sad family.

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I tried to run away.

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And I thought I made
the probable improbable,

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but that was a fancy.

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A short lived sweet pea
climbing up my back fence

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like a girls summer organdy
dress worn only once or twice.

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Some of their sadness
had to be in me.

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Throw these lines away.

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Vines that did not flower.

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A bud is not a summery.

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It is the total
in a reduced form.

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The perverse mimic.

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The desire to repeat
whatever is heard or seen.

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The genes.

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Some big sound studio.

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A memory I abstain
from Mendelssohn

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traced through the
fluted pea family.

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I learned to drive a car
when I was 32-years-old.

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I went back to California
where everyone but me

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was driving by 16.

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And twice that age, I hired
a teacher, hired a car,

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and learned to drive.

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It made me feel free.

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I hate cliches.

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But when you leave
your life alone,

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there is nothing it can
become but a cliche.

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From the beginning, I insisted
on what my friends considered

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an affectation.

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I wore gloves for driving.

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I said the wheel
got too hot or cold,

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but my hands got sweaty
or stiff from rheumatism,

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that I did not feel in
control without gloves.

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In California, almost no
one wears gloves or a hat.

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They are considered
affectations, especially

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in the lower classes
from which I come.

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Yet, I remembered this December
while driving to California

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from the East Coast
after four long years

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of being a licensed
driver that my mother,

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improbable as it
seems, my mother

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used to wear gloves to drive in.

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My mother, who went to
a one room school, who

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lived in a house of the dirt
floor, who never wore gloves

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on any social occasion,
I can remember,

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who never wore a hat, who never
had any place fancy to go,

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who never even had a job
she had to dress up for.

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She, she wore gloves
when she drove a car.

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It is the perverse voice
that speaks in us going back

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to old inflections,
old fictional language

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of other characters.

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And your father
has written what?

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10 unpublished novels.

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Surely, a noble action
we should all admire.

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That a man could continue doing
for himself what most of us

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only do if the world approves.

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And he, he is a
terrible driver you say,

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disapproved by all the family.

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They shudder when
he hits the road.

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Or did you say, he doesn't
even have a license anymore?

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And you're like him you say.

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That's why you are over 30 and
letting me assist in winning

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your driver's license.

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And you reiterate how we're all
like some parent or ancestor.

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But your father
also had four wives.

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Or was it five?

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And you have one
husband, a faithful one

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you would never leave.

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And didn't you say your
father taught English

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all his life to students
who had a hard time reading

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and writing.

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And you, you're a Greek scholar,
a speaker of three languages,

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a blue stocking, if we
use that term anymore.

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And you're only associates
or people like me,

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all of us finding
the literate, a pain

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illiterate, a painful chore.

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Yet, what are these
mimicries that we all

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look for, that we fear?

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The one thing that
has terrified me

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in the dark every
night of my life

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is the thought that I
would be like my mother.

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She, who only read
the Reader's Digest.

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That I would look like her,
heavy and unfashionable.

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That I would talk like her
in a high polite voice.

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And worse, have nothing
interesting to say.

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That I would be condemned to
a life like hers, a sad life,

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discreet of imagination.

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But here I am, unaccountably
with my driving gloves.

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Some stained Mendelsohn
found like the mole

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on my left shoulder, which has
its mysterious twin somewhere.

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And you don't want to
drive badly, or write

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unpublishable books, or
spend your live teaching

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the unteachable.

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I don't want to spend my life
like my mother, unable to get

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along with people, yet,
convinced that I need them,

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working all my life
that jobs I hate

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and which do not
pay much either,

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insisting that I love
everything anyway,

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claiming to love my children,
parading my sacrifices

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for them, talk, talk, talk.

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Do we have no courage
to live our own lives?

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Do we hope the past
will live them for us?

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No, Anne.

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You learn to drive because
you are not your father.

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And why do I wear
these driving gloves?

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Because my hands are arthritic?

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Because I want to feel
like a professional driver?

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Because it is a safety measure?

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Because my mother did?

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No, Anne.

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I wear them because
I like to wear them.

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Our lives are our own.

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We must assert it.

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We must ask grace
from ourselves.

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Our memories, let them
release us from the past.

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What is the past, Anne?

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Only something we have
all lived through.

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Bravo.

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[APPLAUSE]

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