The Road Was His Home

When Dr. Sexson encouraged us to write about a poem that spoke to us I was quickly reminded of On The Road Home, a poem I read last week in Parts Of A World. It goes something like this;

ON THE ROAD HOME 

It was when I said, 
"There is no such thing as the truth," 
That the grapes seemed fatter. 
The fox ran out of his hole. 

You....You said, 
"There are many truths, 
But they are not parts of a truth." 
Then the tree, at night, began to change,

Smoking through green and smoking blue. 
We were two figures in a wood. 
We said we stood alone. 

It was when I said, 
"Words are not forms of a single word. 
In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts. 
The world must be measured by eye." 

It was when you said, 
"The idols have seen lots of poverty, 
Snakes and gold and lice, 
But not the truth;" 

It was at that time, that the silence was largest, 
And longest, the night was roundest. 
The fragrance of the autumn warmest, 
Closest, and strongest. 

I've noticed this reoccuring theme of weather in stevens poetry and it seems he draws a lot of inspiration from it. Helen Vendler writes in On Broken Wings, “…the natural cast of his eyes is upward, and the only phenomenon to which he is passionately attached is the weather” 

The title of the of poem points toward a home but puts the reader in transition. 

I think it was the first stanza that complety absorbed me into this poem. The speaker has realized that there is no truth, we must see everything as it really is, not how he would like to or imagine. And as soon as he did this he began to see things as they really are.

Many of us deny the truth and will only see it or understand it in a way we seem fit.

The second line of the poem is surprising, if there is no truth, how can it make grapes fat or the fox run out of its hole? However the listener makes the distinction that, "there are many truths, but they are not parts of a truth." We begin to see how such constructs determine how we can see the world. And the line that follows depicts this time of change after the listener has realized the constructs that shape their reality.

The third stanza finally uses the personal pronoun We. It is also the only stanza in the poem that is three and not four lines long

The last line in the fourth stanza, "the world must be measured by eye"; restates stevens point that we must leave behind these expecatations of how we are supposed to see things or interpret things. We must see them how they are.

I have a problem with a lot of the idols, celebraties and just "things" people idolize. Maybe this was obvious when dr.sexson told us to name somehing we hate, and i said justin beiber. Ok so maybe I don't actaully hate him as a person, I just despire what he stands for. Hundered of thousands of teenage girls and boys idolize him for all the wrong reasons. This is a problem in all the "idols" most of americans look up to. This is why i love the fith stanza of the poem. Stevens writes how these people, are blind from the truth, regardless of how they much they have seen or the expiernces they lived.

the repetition of "It was..." in four the the six stanzas suggest the speaker is looking in the past to deal with their current reality.

Stevens wants to encourage our escape from all these "truths" these realities: and preconceived notions we live out lives by, and when we do that, out world, our life, will be largest, longest, roundest, warmest, closest and strongest.