Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 7-9
things he'd chosen, and others knew the truth
had been spoken
and began speaking about their rooms
- After another case of enjambment, line 7 keeps things rolling along. Notice how the speaker is using line breaks, placing special emphasis on the words. Line 7 is emphasizing why the student likes driving in his car. He's there alone and can DJ his own solo cruise down the road. Just like having your cake and eating it too, driving alone and blasting your music of your choice can be really, really sweet. And something else happens at the end of line 7. We go from just reading about the one student to reading about "others." Whatever the first student said about his car as a sacred place, other students can relate to him.
- Line 8 shifts gears, literally, back to the past tense. No, the speaker doesn't have a flux capacitor, but he does change verb tense. In fact, it's the passive tense ("had been spoken"), and it's that crazy indented line. So, the indented lines so far have been: "a sacred place," "said it was his car," and now "had been spoken." A lot is going on here. We're swerving back and forth between the past and the present (like a car swerves on a winding road, also like shape of the poem swerves between flush and indented lines).
- Also, it's almost as if the speaker is commenting on the nature of poetry and the power of language. Because the serious student said driving in his car is his sacred place, other students could recognize the truth in his words. Just like the poem is imitating the motion of a car driving down the street, the sacred space of the car also becomes a source of truth.
- Line 9 jumps back to the present tense. Because the tense moves from past to present, there is a chronological progression. Basically, the lines can be seen as moving. Just like a car moves down the street, these lines are cruising down the page. The effect is pretty awesome, and pretty subtle, but of course we're into those kinds of things, Shmoopers.
- At last, the class opens up and they start identifying their sacred places, like their rooms. Good times.