Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Rebecca Wolff’s "Romance" is an exploration of solitude, memory, and the fragile boundary between youthful adventure and existential isolation. The poem unfolds as a recollection, a journey through time and space that doubles as a meditation on identity and mortality. The speaker recalls a moment of transient movement—hitchhiking overnight in a repurposed army truck bound for Paris—but as the memory expands, it becomes clear that the experience is more than just travel; it is a threshold between presence and absence, connection and alienation, life and the sudden possibility of death.

The poem begins with a deceptively simple statement: “Sometimes even now I get this feeling.” This phrase suggests both recurrence and inevitability, as if the sensation about to be described is not confined to the past but continues to surface, unbidden, in the present. What follows is a long, breathless sentence that immerses the reader in a past moment of dislocation and movement: “riding in the back of a small truck, covered wagon, ruched aperture to night sky, repurposed army truck.” The shifting descriptions blur distinctions between the archaic (“covered wagon”), the mechanical (“army truck”), and the cinematic (“ruched aperture to night sky”), making the journey feel both grounded in reality and mythologized by memory. The moment is precarious, in motion, and framed by uncertainty: “2 am and I’m bouncing with a half dozen other hitchhikers, transient, youthful.” The word “transient” signals impermanence, not just of the journey but of youth itself, while “youthful” lingers with a retrospective wistfulness.

The specifics of place—“away from the Calais ferry dock en route to Paris, overnight. To arrive at dawn.”—give the memory a tangible setting, yet the sentence structure fractures time, moving from the departure to the anticipated arrival as if the speaker is already aware of how the journey will conclude. The feeling of being in-between is reinforced: “I’m traveling alone and I don’t speak the language, much.” The lack of linguistic fluency contributes to the sense of disorientation; the speaker is surrounded by others but remains isolated, unable to fully engage. Even the ferry ride before the truck journey is described as “rough and fluorescently lit in the cargo hold,” evoking a harsh, impersonal environment, a stark contrast to the poeticized descriptions of the night sky that follow.

The truck itself is dark, “jostling over ruts—no one chats.” Silence dominates. The speaker’s focus is directed outward, “I just look out the back / the back of the truck / into dark road disappearing behind / watching it grow lighter / in my watching.” These lines enact a doubling: the speaker is both inside the truck and outside of it, simultaneously experiencing and observing. The passage of time—marked by the dark road giving way to light—is not just literal but existential. The past is already vanishing, the self caught in the act of watching itself move forward.

“That’s when it began // romance of exoskeleton.” This sudden shift introduces a key theme: the externalization of the self, the formation of an emotional armor. The word “exoskeleton” suggests a protective shell, an outer structure that shields the vulnerable interior. The speaker describes a “pure sensation of myself alone / before I was alone.” There is an irony here—before actual solitude, there was already the awareness of solitude. The moment marks the beginning of an existential realization: to be in motion, to be in transit, is also to be untethered, without fixed belonging.

The next lines intensify the tension between connection and isolation: “next-to-no language / companions slept touching me / new friends and we never would / even in our youth and fecklessness / care to speak much.” Physical closeness contrasts with verbal distance. There is intimacy in the proximity of bodies, but no real effort to communicate. The phrase “even in our youth and fecklessness” suggests that even in a time when recklessness and spontaneity might allow for deeper connection, the impulse toward solitude prevails.

The speaker then describes a moment of detachment: “so I saw myself external to the night sky / and felt myself / internally so necessarily / alone forever.” The repetition of “myself” emphasizes self-awareness, but the contrast between being “external to the night sky” and “internally alone” highlights a paradox—the speaker perceives themselves as both an object within the vastness of the universe and as an irreducibly singular consciousness. The phrase “alone forever” lands with finality, suggesting that this realization is not merely a passing thought but a fundamental truth about existence.

The poem circles back to the present—“even now”—but instead of resolving the past experience, it collapses it into an ongoing condition: “alone in / no-language night-sky jostling aperture soi- / disant.” The return to fragmented, hybrid language mirrors the earlier description of the truck, reinforcing the idea that this moment of transit, this sensation of being outside oneself, is not just a memory but a recurring state of being.

The final lines introduce a sudden and catastrophic shift: “point on a curve brakes // fail and the truck, its passengers plowed / guardrail and ravine and all / summarily / in the wreck.” The structure disintegrates, the enjambment mimicking the loss of control. What was once a recollection of existential solitude is now a scene of destruction. The ambiguous phrasing leaves open whether this crash is real, imagined, or metaphorical. Does the truck actually crash, or does the speaker simply anticipate it, recognizing the inevitable wreckage—of youth, of relationships, of transient moments—that time brings? The word “summarily” suggests abruptness, an unceremonious end, reinforcing the idea that everything—experience, connection, movement—can be erased in an instant.

"Romance" ultimately explores the allure and terror of solitude, the awareness of one's own transience, and the tension between fleeting connection and inevitable loss. The poem’s structure mirrors its themes, shifting between expansive sentences and abrupt, clipped fragments, enacting the instability of memory and the precariousness of existence. The final image of wreckage suggests that no matter how much one attempts to remain external, observing from the back of the truck, time—and its inevitable consequences—will always catch up.

Copyright (c) 2025 PoetryExplorer

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!

Other Poems of Interest...