The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway

The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway Jennifer L. Knox 83 pp.

Jennifer L. Knox’s The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway is a deliciously strange collection of verse. In a slim volume, Knox presents an enjoyably twisted view of the world around her, filtered through the strange perceptions of mashed-up imagery.

Knox’s poems are each unusual, little twists designed to shake the enjoyer of poetry out of their expectations. In tightly worded verse, Knox takes an image, typically domestic and comfortable, and gives it a rorschach splattering of surrealism. From the devious crocodile mother coming to claim her “lost” child to her intimate description of the villains in an old silent movie-nothing in Knox’s work is conventional.

This conscious break from the comfort zone of much poetry is, of course, symptomatic of modern poetry, but Knox acknowledges this in my favorite poem of the book, “Modern Poetry.” In general terms, “Modern Poetry” is a typical piece from this collection. Knox brings her charmingly unreal imagery to the table, with lines like “In the bottom left corner: a clown-/his red nose, a sudden start, or/ stoplight. Only his comic prosthesis/ is clear” Form wise, she deviates from her typical mode of prose poems or long stanzas into short, choppy couplets. In a very nice touch, she tacks on a list of “Questions for Discussion” at the end of the poem. In these questions Knox’s surrealism surfaces again, wrapped in her cutting sense of humor.

“If you were standing in this poem, would you be wearing a T-shirt or a parka?” (T-shirt, definitely)

The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway’s strongest poem is the long prose piece “Cars.” In lengthy paragraphs of sparkling prose, Knox follows the adventures of an unnamed narrator through the wild spaces of the road. Each of these verse hinge on yet another bad event taking place in the next of a long series of bad cars. At the same time, Knox works the cars in two directions. On the one hand, the cars function as liberation, freeing the narrator to traverse wide spaces physically and mentally. But for this person, cars seem to be a serpent’s tongue, drawing her inexorably towards destruction. From the early paragraphs where the threat is simply the unintentional slaughter of a deer, to the later sections, clipping the door off a van of girl scouts, Knox’s narrator just cannot run into good luck with cars.

I greatly enjoyed The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway-Knox’s poetry was weird and inventive, each poem surprising me with an unexpected image and a pervasive sense of humor. After finishing this volume, I am eagerly looking forward to reading more of her work in the library.

Would I recommend The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway? Yes

Score: 4.3/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Yes.

-Mr. Cheddar