Corrie Lynn White is a young writer and her works are quite interesting to the vast majority of the people. One of the most famous poems of this young author is “Gravy”. At first glance, it is very hard to relate the heading to the main idea of the poem. However, Corrie Lynn White is telling her readers about her confusion about her love relationship that she has just recently started.
stuck in: “If I keep digging under the driver’s seat, I’ll find one more quarter so I can park” (White 75). She starts telling about her love story rather vague. It is a little introduction to her personality that tells the reader that she is just a regular person just like everybody else. Further on the author continues what she may find under the seat and she says that she also can find a tampon or a water bottle. Then she starts with the real point of her poem. The author says “When I first met you, I’d sit straight in your truck” (White 75). Even without further reading, the reader gets a hunch that she will be talking about her relationship with her boyfriend or a guy whom she has recently met and had a crush on. Also, one of the assumptions can be made that the author was trying the reader to think that this poem goes from the women by mentioning tampon in the first 3 lines.
The next lines in the poem go deeper into the relationship that the woman had with this man. The line “and tell myself it’s just lunch” means that a woman was a little bit nervous to get into this relationship (White 75). Therefore, she was trying to persuade herself that she will not fall in love just because of one lunch with the guy. We can assume that she is scared to fall in love. It may be because her heart was broken before. So now she is trying to be more careful and she is trying not to jump into the emotions right away. Then she goes on about the lunch. She says that she had just “chicken salad, dining out on plastic chairs”. So the woman goes further to persuade herself that it did not mean anything. It was just a friendly meal.
Then the author moves into the development of their relationship. She says “I’d watch you while we drove on Capital Boulevard past the Denture Makers, Sally’s Adult Video, Raleigh Tire and U-Haul. You knew where you were going” (White 75). A girl is trying to reflect on their relationship. She thinks about all the places that they have been to together. And she thinks that a guy was a leader in their relationship. He was in charge of what was going on and how fast their relationship should develop. He was the only person who knew what he wanted. Therefore, we can say that a girl was not very happy because she could not control the situation at all. It was quite depressing for her.
The next lines say “The world was flat on its back -- reaching like hell to flip on ours,
make us stare up and forget what we ate” (White 75). Here she moves to a different stage of their relationship. Whenever their feelings were not as bright as at the beginning, the daily routine started ruining them. They were no longer as happy as they were before. The world got back on them. They were too busy with their lives to take good care of their relationship and love for each other.
“I swept them accidentally under the bed four months ago” tells the reader that their relationship lasted 4 months. The allegory to the underwear may intend that their intimate relationship lasted for four months. Then she says that “I thought the world wanted me to keep stirring the gravy around with the wooden spoon, because as soon as I looked away, the gravy would boil over”. It is a very interesting reference. She may refer to her boyfriend as gravy or the feelings that they had to each other. It may intend that she was supposed to be calm in the relationship and do everything the way he wanted. Also, we may assume that her boyfriend would get very jealous without any specific reasons.
“It’s hard to believe they (birds) get up that far” line intends to say that she cannot believe that their relationship went this far (White 75). She did not expect the casual lunch with chicken salad on a croissant to turn into the 4 month relationship. However, it may be assumed that it ended without any specific reasons for that.
People’s relationships are quite complicated. Every story is very unique and hard to explain. The author is doing her best to tell her reader about this story. The poem “Gravy” by Corrie Lynn White describes a beginning, development and the end of the relationship between man and woman from the female perspective. The reader goes through all the stages of their relationship. The author tells all the intimate details of their relationship to the reader. However, her boyfriend was not quite happy with his girlfriend, so they broke up. The main idea of this poem is to describe the relationship. The author does not give her readers any advice, she simply describes this particular relationship line between man and woman. This poem definitely is trying to say that a woman was putting more effort into the relationship from the very beginning. However, her boyfriend just dragged along and ended the relationship. A girl did not know why this has happened and she is trying to analyze their relationship line in this poem. However, at the end she surprises herself how it went so far, something that both of them took casual from the very beginning. The poem “Gravy” is a poem about modern love that confuses all the people in our crazy life.
Works Cited
White, Corrie. “Gravy”. Best Poets of 2013. Ed. Barbara Schaughnessey. Virginia: U of
Virginia. P. 75-76.
