Jump Cabling Poem

Linda Pastan's "Jump Cabling" is a love story like many. "Jump Cabling" however, is a short poem about jump starting a car as a metaphor for an intimate love story between the two strangers. Pastan's poem uses a peculiar but important structure and form along with alliteration, metaphor, symbol, and allusion to bring the mundane affairs of romance to life. The poem itself is a metaphor for an intimate encounter the speaker has with a stranger. The author uses the woman's car breaking down and the man stopping to help along with the process of restarting the speaker's car as a metaphor for the intimate encounter, the cars a symbol for their bodies. Each line of the poem is a symbol referencing a body part of the woman and the stranger. …show more content…
The first seven lines have large spacing between the final words showing the disconnect between the speaker and the stranger, it shows they are each their own as they explore each other. The final line of the poem "I thought why not ride the rest of the way together?" (8) is significant to the poem, because there is no spacing between the final words. The eighth line shows the two coming together and becoming one; the moment in which the speaker and the stranger make love (Rcraigmile). The poem also shows alliteration of w words, "when", "when we were", "way", and "workings". The alliteration of these words gives soft flowing pace and an almost nostalgic feel and tone to the poem. The tone shows that this is an intimate encounter the speaker has been longing for. Linda Pastan's "Jump Cabling" is a love story like no other, using a broken down car and a stranger stopping to help as a metaphor for an intimate encounter with a stranger. Pastan's use of a nostalgic tone and strikingly important structure and form show the metaphor of the two cars and the strangers coming together as