Stern's I Who Lifted a Car

Singing the Dementia Blues

Dec 23, 2008 Linda Sue Grimes

Gerald Stern's poem plays with reconstituted clichés and expressions that demonstrate the ruination of a body and mind plummeting into dementia.

Gerald Stern’s “I Who Lifted a Car” features four cinquains. Its theme is self-deprecation. The speaker is aging and unsettled by the degeneration of his physical and mental faculties.

First Cinquain: “My lips say the words too slow”

The speaker begins his litany of complaints by remarking that his “lips say the words too slow.” He might have added “ungrammatically,” as he saw fit to let an adjective do the work of an adverb. The next line features a reconstituted cliché: “I am a drop in the bucket,” ostensibly allowing the reader to associate that the speaker is about to “kick the bucket,” while merely stating that he is not important.

The speaker then reports that his body will “never catch up” because he is “going in reverse.” Then he complains that his “slow mind has ruined” him. He does not make clear just what it is with which he will “never catch up.” Quite possibly, he is “going in reverse” back to his childhood, another clichéd scheme that the aging human being re-enters his childhood, if he lives long enough to experience dementia.

Second Cinquain: “and pound for pound the fleabane”

The speaker again reconstitutes an old concept: the trick-riddle, “which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead?” This speaker, for whom the reader at this point must begin to feel sympathetic, easily forgives these lapses; after all, the speaker has admitted that he is suffering from the on-set of Alzheimer’s. Therefore, instead of deriding the cliché the reader has to defend them as rather clever for a mind that is in ruin.

Thus, the fleabane and the iron having the same weight pound for pound demonstrates the presence at least of some agility of mind. The speaker then claims, “one of my obsessions / is guessing the weight of bridges.” He follows this confession with the revelation that he has, indeed, “traveled by car.” No doubt, he has seen those bridges whose weight over which he obsessed, while traveling by car.

Third Cinquain: “and I can guess the weight”

The speaker then unveils the dubious factoid that he can “guess the weight / of a woman,” because he is “so good.” He adds that even though his “lips says the words too slow,” his heart “goes out to a woman.” Again, the grammar deficiency—“lips says”—but again the reader understands that this is the speaker’s ruined mind at work.

That the speaker’s heart goes out to woman remains unqualified and unelaborated; she must remain a mystery woman. The speaker then adds, “I who drove a car.” Not only did he “travel” by car back when he was becoming obsessed with the weight of bridges, but he also “drove a car.”

Fourth Cinquain: “But I am a drop in the bucket”

The fourth cinquain features a villanelle-like repetition of early lines: the speaker is a “drop in the bucket, his body “will never catch up,” he is “going in reverse,” and his “slow mind has ruined [him].” All this downbeat hodgepodge is happening to someone who “lifted a car,” an important line because it also titles the poem.

It is quite appropriate that the reader cannot be sure if by “lifted a car” the speaker means that he stole a car or he raised a car from the ground with his muscles. It is likely the latter, but either would imply a strength of body and mind, the loss of which the speaker is now lamenting.

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Gerald Stern