Lynne Knight, Youthful Love, and a 1953 Buick

However, when we think of sex and automobiles, it is usually about youth. Lynne Knight fleshes out the reality of such a youthful experience in her “There, in My Grandfather’s Old Green Buick.” Knight tells us much about parking: surprisingly, perhaps, male rather than female restraint; distracting thoughts about somehow damaging the car; memories of Catholic religious instruction; exploration and self-control; and a new sense of a more mature self. Knight later stated that the poem “Pretty much encapsulates my sexual experiences as a teenager although it probably makes me sound a little more sexually aware than I actually was. There was a fierce desire, yes, but also lots of blind fumbling.”

He was touching me where no one

had touched me before, there,

in my grandfather’s old green Buick

that wouldn’t go in reverse,

so all the while I was worrying

how he’d get the car turned around

and headed back to his school,

there as we were under the dark pines

…

I worried he’d scrape the paint against the pines

and then he whispered We have to stop Do you know why

we have to stop and I nodded,

…

and we slipped past the pines with our headlights

still out and when we got there, I slid

behind the wheel and drove down the mountain

knowing something had happened I couldn’t reverse

anymore than I could the Buick, knowing I wanted it,

no matter what the nuns said, I wanted it, I could feel

my body wet and alive as if there had been a birth.

Knight recently recalled some of the circumstances surrounding the writing of the poem: When I wrote the poem, I had returned to poetry after a 20-year hiatus. . . . when I finally got back to where I could tell the truth about my life, I was able to write poetry again. I think of this poem as one of my breakthrough poems – it showed me I could take memory and make of it something new, something that would speak to others.”