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Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter | Introduction

“Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter” appears in Robert Bly’s 1962 collection of poems, Silence in the Snowy Fields. Like many of Bly’s poems, it is short—only five lines. It appears midway through the second section of the collection titled “Awakening.” The first section is “Eleven Poems of Solitude,” and the last section is “Silence on the Roads.” Bly, who was born and has lived most of his life in rural Minnesota, describes driving to town on a cold and snowy night to mail a letter and recounts the revelation he has during the event. It’s easy to see why Bly placed it in the “Awakenings” section, as it details the speaker’s sudden recognition of how the meaningful can be found in the mundane. Like many of Bly’s poems, “Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter” is quite accessible. It uses a few well-placed and well-drawn images to evoke the feelings of solitude and wonder from the natural world, and it contains the kind of “leaping image” for which Bly’s poetry has been celebrated, and criticized. There are other poems for which Bly is better known, but “Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter” is significant because it is typical of the kind of poems Bly wrote during the early 1960s.

Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter Summary

First line
The first line of “Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter” elaborates on the action of the poem’s title, setting the scene. Two simple declarative sentences create the image of emptiness. The cold and the snow evoke the season and, for readers familiar with Bly’s work, the upper Midwest where Bly lives and where many of his poems are set. The deserted main street evokes solitude and, perhaps, the presence of death. The fact that it is a “town” and not a city suggests that the speaker is driving in from a rural setting.

Second line
This image focuses the reader’s attention on the swirling snow and emphasizes the utter desolation of the street. It matters little whether or not one is familiar with snowy nights in the upper Midwest. A tumbleweed could just as easily stand in for the “swirls of snow.” What’s important here is the speaker’s attention to the only thing moving, as it figuratively “freezes” the reader’s imagination for an instant.

Third line
Like the speaker, readers too feel the “cold iron” of the door. By bringing the sense of touch to the poem, Bly emphasizes the “embodiedness” of the speaker, even as he evokes his selfconsciousness in other parts of the poem. This is typical of much Bly... » Complete Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter Summary