Cleaning the Buick
Joe drives the ’62 Buick through the pleasant little town
You remark that if you had a bicycle you could explore the town
Two four-door cars pull in behind you as you leave town
They follow you to a roadblock and box you in
They test Joe for alcohol and search for contraband
The policeman complains that you have too much trash
You ask him if there is a trash can to dispose of it
He gets one you thank him for helping to clean the car
| Larry Blazek |
|
levelheaded: Cleaning the Buick
“Cleaning the Buick” is like one of Frank Stella’s Black Paintings, in which patterns of thick black lines are painted just thick enough that the white of the canvas shows through in thin, wispy lines. Underneath and between his broad minimalist strokes, Stella reveals a truth about much of painting: it relies on a canvas. On a similar note, Blazek’s language—phrases like “pleasant little town” and the ordinariness of the policeman’s complaint “that you have too much trash”—is broad enough to easily establish a narrative pattern in the poem but empty enough of meaning that the language kind of hovers here ambiguously.
Despite the poem’s clear narrative, nothing important happens in “Cleaning the Buick.” Two guys driving through a town get pulled over, and after a police officer finds nothing wrong, he helps them clean their car. The threat of conflict is there (particularly when the police “box [them] in” at a road block and “search for contraband”), but the threat never develops into any real danger. For a moment it seems Larry Blazek is just having fun giving us the ol’ switcheroo, leading us down one path only to let us know later we are on another. This kind of explanation might hold up if the police officer transformed into an alien and ate the speaker’s head. He doesn’t. Instead we are left with a subtle let-down, one that feels genuine because it is so mundane.
For one, the language of this poem is particularly plain. Details about the cars being four-doored or from 1962 are so specific that they lend clinical aspect to the speaker’s already flat manner of speech. Additionally, the poem is absent any enjambment. Almost every line is its own complete thought and its own complete sentence. Only the final line, “He gets one you thank him for helping clean the car,” deviates from this formula, and even in this run-on sentence the literal action of the poem remains clear. “Cleaning the Buick” feels appropriately cleaned of any of the floridity we often expect from poetry. It is the opposite of baroque. It is, in some refreshing ways, the opposite of intellectual. Blazek has removed any possibility of an undercurrent—he has removed the rubbish and left only what’s useful in moving on down the road.
– The Editors
