stafford

William Stafford’s "Traveling Through the Dark" is beautifully written poem that expresses one of life’s most challenging aspects. It is the story of a man’s solitary struggle to deal with a tragic event that he encounters. Driving down a narrow mountain road, “Traveling Through the Dark,” the narrator of the poem encounters a deer. This line might fool the reader into believing the poem has a happy theme; after all, a deer …

…never get to where one is going, still, the journey is very important. “Traveling Through the Dark” is in the loose form of a sonnet while “A Noiseless, Patient Spider” is free verse. They are both unscannable. Although by the language of prose and the elements within these two poems seem very different, the interpretation suggests that they both discuss man’s journey through life. The physical in one, and the spiritual in the other.