A New Critical Analysis of Karl Shapiro's "Buick"

The poem entitled "Buick," by Karl Shapiro, begins with a paradox because although the title implies that the poem will be about a car, the speaker begins with an image of a "sloop" or sailboat. However, this leads to a much bigger paradox when the speaker refers to his car as "she" in line 2. The speaker begins to compare his "new" car in line 5 to a beautiful, voluptuous creature with "hips of a girl" (6). The speaker then equates the experience of putting some miles on his "new" car to the thrill of conquest obtained by a man when he has sex with a virginal girl. A close examination of the poem's point of view, diction, imagery, and tone indicates that although the speaker anticipates this thrill of conquest after his initial driving of his "new" car, he is ultimately cheated out of the thrill because he realizes that the "Buick" is really a secondhand car. The first stanza describes the first stage of the driving experience, which is paralleled to the first stage of sexual intercourse between the speaker and his "new" car. At first glance, it seems that the poem is written in the third-person point of view because the speaker refers to the "Buick" as "she" in line 2. However, the speaker's reference to the car as "my warm-hearted beauty" in line 3, indicates that the entire poem is actually written in first-person. The diction of the first stanza attributes pure, pristine, virginal qualities to the car as the speaker describes the "immaculate wing on her delicate spine" (1). The car is a "thoroughbred sloop" which is "new" (5), but is the car "new" in the sense that it was recently acquired by the speaker, or "new" because the car is inexperienced and untrained in the art of being driven? The word "new" in line 5 seems to imply both meanings as the speaker compares the car to a fresh, unsullied young girl in the first stanza by using the imagery of a "warm-hearted beauty" (3), "a thoroughbred sloop" (5), and a "high-spirited spirit" (5). The car is introduced as an object of beauty, and the speaker praises his freshly acquired possession in a playful tone as he calls the car "[his] kiss" (5). The speaker marvels at the manner in which his car "tack[s] on the curves with parabola speed" (4), and he is excited to possess such a beautiful, "laughing," (3) untainted car. He is just as excited as a man who skillfully manages to coax a beautiful, virginal girl to sleep with him. The second stanza develops the foreplay, or second stage, of the driving experience as the speaker's "foot suggests that [she] leap in the air with [her] hips of a girl" in line 6. However, the car goes from leaping at the speaker's suggestion, to leaping on "her" own in line 9, where the

speaker says, "You leap, you intelligence." The fact that "she" leaps seems to imply that she begins to move impulsively and is not a mere reactor to the speaker's advances. Also, "intelligence" seems to imply the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge, so with whom did the car attain this prior knowledge of the driving experience? Has some other man driven her before? The imagery of the second stanza affirms that the speaker is indeed a man because in his personification of the car as a young girl, he is aroused primarily by visual stimuli, and men are generally more aroused by visual stimuli than women are. The speaker is excited by his "finger that praises [her] wheel and announces [her] voices of song," in line 7, and he generally cannot keep his hands off the car's body. The tone of the second stanza is more intense and flirtatious because the speaker's excitement builds as he now fondles the car instead of merely admiring "her." The climax of the driving experience occurs at the end of the second stanza when the car's "platinum clocks of excitement stir like the hairs of a fern" (10). "Platinum" connotes a silvery-white color, so this could be where penetration occurs in their sexual experience; the car's "clocks of excitement" are silvery-white because they are now wet with semen. The tone suddenly shifts to confusion in the third stanza as the speaker wonders at the car's level of skill and experience in being driven. He marvels, "But how alien you are from the booming belts of your birth and the smoke / Where you turned on the stinging lathes of Detroit and Lansing at night / And shrieked at the torch in your secret parts and the amorous tests," in lines 11 through 13. After penetration occurs, the speaker realizes that the car was not really "new" and virginal when "she" came into his possession. Those innocent, inexperienced days in Detroit and Lansing are long gone because the car is much too experienced now. The speaker realizes, in line 15, that "[She is] all instinct with [her] phosphorous glow and [her] streaking hair." How did the car suddenly go from shrieking to being totally instinctual and uninhibited with regard to being driven by a man? The change could not have occurred suddenly, so the car must have been owned and driven by another man before being purchased by the speaker. Upon realizing that he has bought and driven a secondhand car, the speaker is emasculated and his tone in the fourth stanza carries a disappointed and betrayed quality. He says, "And now when we stop it is not as the bird from the shell that I leave" (16). This confirms my assertion that the speaker is male because he was inside the car during their experience together. He is disappointed that he cannot be like "the leathery pilot who steps from his bird with a sneer of delight," in line 17. The diction here is interesting because "leathery" seems to imply

being tough and weathered, but the speaker emphasizes that this is not how he feels at the end. The speaker's repetition of the word "not" in lines 16 and 18 emphasizes that the speaker did not achieve the thrill of conquest that he had anticipated. The car is not a "bird" as in line 17 or an "ignorant beast" as in line 18, and the speaker now openly admits that he feels cheated out of the anticipated thrill of being the car's "first" owner and driver. The speaker credits the car with experience and independence as he says, "with exquisite breathing you smile, with satisfaction of love," in line 19. The speaker finally comes to terms with the fact that he has been swindled into buying a secondhand car, in the last line when he "touch[es] [her] again as [she] tick[s] in the silence and settle[s] in sleep."