Speaking

Although there aren't any quotes in the poem, speaking is a crucial idea that runs throughout the entire text. It's a Chatty Cathy kind of poem—a "motor mouth" if you will… and we will, so there. The entire poem is about a classroom discussion, and yet it ends on the image of getting in the car and driving away from, among other things, the need to speak. At some point, the poem claims, the time for talk is over and it's time to get in the car, go, and end sentences like… this one.

• Line 1: This is the first time we "hear" someone talking. "[T]he teacher asked" the class and, although we don't have a quotation, we have the beginning of a discussion. Just like the end of the poem mentions putting a key in the ignition and driving away, the teacher's question is like the key that opens the poem and the classroom discussion. 
• Line 5: Here we get the first response. The most serious kid "[says] it was his car." That "it" would be a sacred place. So he identifies that place with language by saying "it" in class. In other words, "it" is both the sacred place the teacher asked about, as well as of course the literal saying of the word "it." It's as if the speaking somehow embodies the sacred place that the teacher asked about. 
• Line 8: This line uses the past participle "had been spoken." It's almost as if the students realize that something profound was shared. That phrase "had been spoken" gives a specific weight to the act of speaking, sort of like how God speaks in the book of Genesis in the King James Bible. When he speaks, things magically appear—as if words have the power to create whole worlds. 
• Line 9: At this point, the serious student gets the other students all hot and bothered—about speaking, that is. They "began speaking," we're told. Just like the teacher's question opened up the discussion, the serious student's answer opened up the floodgates for other students to begin sharing about their sacred places. Speaking begets speaking. It's as if language has the power to create more language, connect people, and help us reveal ourselves to each other. 
• Line 15-16: These two lines mention speaking again, but it's in a different context: "a car could take him from the need // to speak, or to answer." Hit the brakes for a moment. Earlier in the poem, speaking is this great, opening, creative act, and now we're supposed to be getting in the car and driving to a sacred place that is far away from the "need to speak." What's the big idea? The big idea is that the teacher is trying to get the students—much like the speaker of the poem is trying to get the reader—to articulate this silent, sacred place where language is no longer necessary. It's as if speaking gets replaced by the act of driving in a car. The presence of the "sacred" demands silence. So speaking becomes both a path to the sacred and, paradoxically, something that must be left behind in order to be present in a sacred place. Somehow the poem is trying to become a place that embodies both the need for language and the need to leave language behind.