Monday, January 13, 2003

Traveling Through The Dark Comments

Rating: 4.2

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
...
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William Stafford
COMMENTS
Savita Tyagi 06 December 2021

So so sad!

0 0 Reply
Mahtab Bangalee 03 February 2020

I thought hard for us all- my only swerving- , then pushed her over the edge into the river. // beautiful poem penned

0 0 Reply
Younger dankboi 24 May 2018

Just terrible, worst poem I ever read.

1 9 Reply
Older dankboi 24 May 2018

It sucked my dic. That is how bad it was

3 10 Reply
Alison Vargas 27 November 2017

Amazing poem I love it

3 2 Reply
Nicholas Campbell 23 October 2014

Someone online, I thought it here at Poem Hunter, remarked that the whole premise of the poem is false, because, he wrote, the unborn deer lay in its mother dead more than three hours. Stafford didn't say that in the poem: he said a recent kill, and that may mean very recent; the deer was still warm! You stand corrected, whomever you are. Nick Campbell

9 5 Reply
Dawn Fuzan 11 May 2014

Realy good poem

7 6 Reply
Brian Jani 09 May 2014

Wow, I like this one

8 5 Reply
Francie Lynch 17 February 2014

You want to read an amazing poem on the same topic? David, by Earl Birney. Long narrative poem by one of Canada's (and the world's) great modern poets.

4 10 Reply
Anne Comer 14 April 2020

My god... yes, I read it and the imagery will live always with me.

0 0
Paul Reed 17 February 2014

Heart-rendign and poignant

2 9 Reply
John Mcdonald 29 November 2012

I think the man made the right decision in not saving the unborn deer, had he saved it, it would have died of starvation and dehydration and so what he really did was save the deer from a brief painful life.

31 8 Reply
Kadeja Bailey 24 January 2010

the speaker is having a moral dilema the poem is about nature and death and the sadness that comes with it

24 26 Reply
Candace Johnson 14 October 2009

That is sooo sad. Why couldn't he save it? ?

8 36 Reply
Carolyn Dimmick 06 September 2008

It is very well written, but very sad. Were it I, I would have saved the yet unborn

14 29 Reply
Nick Capozzoli 01 August 2007

It is technically not a sonnet as regards either line number or rhyme scheme, but it has the feel of a sonnet and is a very good poem. The rhythm of the five-beat line and the images are masterful.

8 28 Reply
Charley P 18 June 2007

It's a poignant poem but you're right, its not a sonnet. I like it.

8 29 Reply
E F 30 August 2006

A sad poignant moment. A live being lives on beyond and then dies. Almost unbearable

5 30 Reply
David Rogers 04 April 2006

Dude, it's not a sonnet. Sonnets have fourteen lines.

16 26 Reply
Greg Hutchinson 18 September 2005

This is a very fine sonnet. Its 7 out of 10 'user rating' is a reflection on the readers, not the poem. I wonder how many readers even recognized that it is a sonnet. The half-rhymes and loose iambic give it a prosy surface without sacrificing the rhythm, which is perfect. Take the last line: 'Then pushed her over the edge into the river, ' exactly echoes the sense - with the first cluster of stressed syllables suggesting the pushing and the last, rushing syllables suggesting the release and fall. By the way, I wonder why the order to choose a number wasn't accompanied by any number. I couldn't vote! I'd have given it a 10.

13 34 Reply
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