CARS Annotated

CARS, by Elinor Nauen, reprints the classic “masterful tale of one woman’s travels through the 1970s,” evoking “the wider societal upheaval, rebelliousness, nihilism, freedom, and hopefulness of the era.” Lavishly annotated for this new edition. CARS is a new epic which with a tear in one eye [Nauen] uses the memories of all the cars of her life to chronicle youthful years of portable life - celebrating the restlessness & interstate desires the more adventurous of those growing up in the 60's & 70's shared. … There is a life enclosed in these pages that promises to continue beyond the poem. Her life now fiction is subversive to the orderly American routine this decade the same way On the Road was in the mushroom cloud Levittown 50s. Yet here are the poem's last lines of acceptance: "I've left out much more than I've included, I can't think/of anything I haven't done in a car that I still want to do,/ & now I want to do it all again." Mothers love their outlaw children. ~ Greg Masters, The Poetry Project Newsletter, June/July 1980