Driving Glove 11/6

"Driving Glove" by Claudia Emerson

Claudia Emerson was born and raised in Chatham, Virginia. She studied writing at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Her honors include two additional Pulitzer Prize nominations as well as fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2008 she was appointed poet laureate of Virginia, a two-year role. She died in 2014.

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 its loss. 

In this poem, Emerson writes with a clear melancholic tone about a painful reminder. However, there are multiple tragedies that appear in this poem. It begins with a woman going about her everyday life and unloading groceries from the trunk of her car. During this task she finds a glove belonging to her husband’s late wife. With it comes the reminder of her husband’s past life and all the pain and sorrow it held. She details the glove as “delicate, soft” and that it “still remembered her hand.” The first tragedy is the physical one of a husband losing his wife. Even though this tragedy is not detailed at all in the poem, it is relevant because this poem would not exist if not for it. That tragedy still creates ripples of effects like the scene shown in the poem.

The second tragedy is the emotional one that comes from the narrator finding her husband’s late wife’s glove as she is trying to go about her daily life. It feels as if this has been just one of many reminders of this woman that have resurfaced as the narrator is trying to live a normal life with her husband. She feels torn because she is tired of finding bits and pieces of his late wife and past life everywhere she goes but knows it would not be appropriate to share her feelings on this sensitive topic with her husband. That is noted in the shift in tone after she finished detailing the glove. The tone is suddenly despairing. I envision her sighing and placing the glove back where she found it, knowing that dwelling on it will do no one any good but notes “I have not forgotten it remains.”