Volume 10 185

reader and the speaker. The poem, which reads as
an attempt to come to grips with this experience,
whether it was actual or imagined, serves as a
metaphor for any such experience. By ending the
poem with the question “How would it be?” Tay-
lor thrusts the speaker’s experience into readers’
minds, asking them to imagine how such an event
would change their own lives.

Death
“Landscape with Tractor” relates a story of ex-
perience encroaching on innocence. The poem
echoes the story of the Garden of Eden. The
speaker’s field represents a contemporary version
of the garden. It is isolated, with plenty of land and
a vegetable garden. The speaker does not have to
work very hard, mowing the grass infrequently
(every six weeks). Into this paradise comes death
in the form of what appears to be “a clothing-store
dummy.” This interruption into the dreamy world
of the speaker and his country home jolts the
speaker. He must now “contend” with death as real
and human, and present, rather than thinking about
it as a seasonal thing that happens to his garden and
field. The knowledge that death brings to the
speaker changes him irrevocably, and changes his
relationship to his field, nature. Although his bush-
hog can eliminate all physical traces of the body,
the speaker cannot get the image of the woman out
of his mind. Details about her death flood him
whenever he thinks of her. She reminds him of the
possibility of his own death. When he says that “she
will stay in that field” until he dies, he is using
“field” not only to denote the physical field that he
tends, but his own field of consciousness as well.
In his consciousness an awareness of mortality has
been planted and continues to grow. By wondering
about the circumstances of the dead woman’s life
and the way in which she went from being “Some-
one” into “no one,” the speaker implicitly wonders
about the meaning of his own existence and the in-
evitability of his death.

The title “Landscape with Tractor” suggests that it
will be in the tradition of landscape paintings. Such
paintings as Bruegel’s “Winter Landscape with the
Bird Trap” are meditations on place that ask view-
ers to look more closely at a familiar scene, or to
look at a scene in a new way. Taylor’s poem is a
meditation anda narrative: that is, it tells a story of
a particular event while simultaneously exploring the
meaning of that event. Characters in the story in-
clude country doctors, the dead woman, townspeo-
ple, and the speaker himself. Although the speaker
addresses the second person “you” throughout the

poem, the way in which he relates details and the

poem’s tone suggests that he is also addressing a part

of himself. In doing this, he is attempting to under-

stand the impact of this event on his life.

Explaining the use of his persona in the poem,

Taylor wrote in an email to this critic stating, “My

not having had the actual experience is the main

reason for the poem’s slightly unusual use of sec-

ond-and first-person narration. For most of the way,

the second-person narration is not noticeably dif-

ferent from that of many poems where ‘I’ seems to

have been changed to ‘you’ for no better reason

than to avoid ‘I.’ Near the end, though, the narra-

tor suddenly intrudes in the first person, saying

“And I ask you again, how would it be?” By that

time I was interested not only in trying to avoid

claiming the experience too fully for myself, but

also in trying to make a small comment on the ten-

dency to use ‘you’ for ‘I.’ ”

The speaker’s tone is one of a measured be-

wilderment and growing resignation. He has

enough emotional distance from the event to recall

it in some detail, yet he has not yet been able to in-

tegrate its impact into his life. By using a steady

rhythmic base and quatrains (four line stanzas), the

most common stanza form in English versification,

Landscape with Tractor

Topics for

Further

Study

• Brainstorm in writing or discussion about a time
  when a particular event changed the way that
  you experienced a part of your daily routine,
  then write a “Before and After” essay detailing
  that change and its consequences.


• Taking the position of the “you” in “Landscape
  with Tractor,” write an essay answering the
  questions that the speaker poses.


• Compose a description of a rural Garden of Eden
  as it would look in the twentieth century, and
  then compose one of an urban Garden of Eden.
  Discuss the similarities and differences in your
  descriptions and what these tell you about your
  own conception of paradise.