"Driving Glove" Review

"Driving Glove" by Claudia Emerson


Claudia Emerson is an American poet born in January of 1957. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for her poetry collection Late Wife.  She has also written several poetry books, Late Wife being the most recognizable. 



Driving Glove

I was unloading groceries from the trunk of what had been her car, when the glove floated up from underneath the shifting junk-a crippled umbrella, the jack, ragged maps.I knew it was not one of yours, this more delicate, soft, made from the hide of a kid or lamb. It still remembered her hand, the creases where her fingers

had bent to hold the wheel, the turn of her palm, smaller than mine. There was nothing else to do but return it-let it drift, sink, slow as a leaf through water to rest on the bottom where I have not forgotten it remains-persistent in it's loss. 



"Driving Glove" is included in a collection of poems entitled Late Wife and is found in the third section,“Late Wife: Letters to Kent.” This collection's focus is on a woman who leaves one marriage, for whatever reason,for another with a man that has lost his wife to lung cancer.“Driving Glove” is an elegy, it's a rather mournful and melancholy poem. The poem is not set up in stanzas, and lacks a rhyme scheme, adding to the mournful and reminiscent effect of the poem. Emerson's description of the glove describes it as being long forgotten, but well worn. The line “It still remembered her hand, the creases where her fingers had bent to hold the wheel, the turn of her palm, smaller than mine” suggests that the owner of the glove was lost in some type of tragedy. The audience can infer that because she died in some type of tragedy, her former husband had neglected to remove her personal belongings from the car, and rather chose to leave her things where she left them. The last line of the poem, “There was nothing else to do but return it – let it drift, sink, slow as a leaf through water to rest on the bottom where I have not forgotten it remains—persistent in its loss.” suggest that the new wife of the woman's former husband is choosing to follow in her lovers footsteps and leave the glove, along with the other personal materials where she had found them, in the trunk of the car. The overall tone of the narrator is one of sadness. As she finds her predecessor's belongings, she is filled with sadness from the findings of her things and imagines what she might have been like.