18 pages • 36 minutes read
James DickeyCherrylog Road
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1963A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
Each of the 18 stanzas of the poem consists of six unrhymed lines. The meter is extremely flexible and does not follow any traditional pattern. The length of the lines also varies considerably. The shortest lines are dimeters, consisting of just two poetic feet: “Sparkplugs, bumpers” (Line 57), for example, is a dimeter consisting of two trochees. (A trochee is a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable.) The longer lines tend to be tetrameters (four poetic feet) but the most common line is the trimeter, or three poetic feet. That can also be thought of as a three-beat line, which means that three syllables are stressed. These lines often contain anapests. An anapest is two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. Anapestic meter moves the line along quickly, which makes it quite suitable for narrative poems such as “Cherrylog Road.” Dickey has a story to tell and he wants to keep it moving forward. The anapests are often combined with iambs or trochees to create the trimeter line. “In the parking lot of the dead” (Line 25), for example, consists of an anapest followed by an iamb, followed by an anapest, as does “As I neared the hub of the yard” (Line 32). A variation occurs in the line, “Through the acres of wrecks she came” (Line 77), which is two anapests followed by an iamb. “To blast the breath from the air” (Line 75), is two iambs followed by an anapest, as is “I popped with sweat as I thought” (Line 49). On occasion, the line consists of just two anapests, to form an anapestic dimeter, such as “and would come from the farm” (Line 19) and “with a wrench in her hand” (Line 78).
Alliteration and Assonance
The poem as a whole makes occasional use of alliteration (the repetition of nearby initial consonants), such as “blast the breath” and “Through the acres of wrecks she came / With a wrench in her hand.” In the final stanza, alliteration is noticeably part of the final effect: “Drunk on the wind in my mouth, / Wringing the handlebar for speed, / Wild to be wreckage forever” (Lines 106-08). The alliterative “w” sounds are very prominent, especially “Wringing” and “wreckage.” “Wind” and “Wringing” are also an example of assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds, as are the second syllables of “wreckage” and “forever.” Readers may wonder what the last line actually means, but Dickey was an admirer of the poetry of Dylan Thomas, in which the sounds of the words are often more important than any actual meaning they might have. It is the poetic music of the final lines that remain in the reader’s mind as the speaker expresses his devil-may-care attitude. Intoxicated by speed and power, he feels untouchable, immortal even.
Animal Imagery
The animal imagery consists of small creatures that one might find in a long-abandoned junkyard. These include toad, kingsnake, and blacksnake (metaphorically representing the narrator), mouse (Doris), roaches, crickets, and beetles. In stanza 14, the blacksnake “dies / Of boredom” (Lines 79-80) in the junkyard, and in the next stanza, “the beetle knows / The compost has no more life” (Lines 80-81). This suggests that even in the heat of spring or summer, nature, at least at this microlevel, seems exhausted. Yet as soon as the boy and Doris get together in the back seat, the blacksnake “curved back / into life” (lines 89-90) and the beetles “reclaimed their field” (Line 92). It is as if the sexual coupling of boy and girl enlivens nature too; it is a restorative act on more than one level.
