How we cite our quotes: (Line)
Quote #4
the bright altar of the dashboard (13)
This is what poetry people like to call metaphor and it's one of the sacred tools of poets who want to elevate language into something beyond itself. Whoa, Nelly—hit the brakes! How is a dashboard an altar? Well, just as altars are usually flat surfaces where something is praised, sacrificed, or prayed over, Dunn wants the car to be an image of a spiritual, sacred location. So he mentions "bright" because of the dashboard lights, but also because "lightness" is usually associated with spiritual beings. So, we've got the spiritual lingo going, and that's right on track because Dunn wants to interweave the experience of driving with the experience of being in a sacred place. This metaphor reinforces that idea by elevating the car to a holy setting.