Auto Wreck (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Karl Shapiro
- First Published: 1941
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Suicide, Police, Doctors, Cancer, War, Accidents, Death or dying, Blood, Hospitals, Technology, Automobiles
The Poem
“Auto Wreck” is an impressionistic poem of three stanzas and thirty-nine lines that takes a hard look at the spectacle of injury and accident in a crassly technological world. The title, in trademark Karl Shapiro style, focuses attention on the unadorned, literalist description of a common event or experience.
In the first stanza, which comprises the first fourteen lines, the reader is situated, as it were, in front of an ambulance that is speeding toward the scene of an automobile accident; the reader is kept informed by an omniscient voice, which...
[The entire page is 1520 words long]
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