Leverett T. Smith, Jr.: On "I Know a Man"
The second poem, "I Know a Man," is without doubt Creeley's best-known. A phrase of it has served as the title of Jeremy Lamer's novel Drive, He Said and of the movie made from it. More recently the poem has served as the epigraph of the final chapter of Stephen King's fantasy about American automobile culture, Christine. In this chapter, the book's narrator, Dennis Guilder, attempts to destroy the possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury Christine by battering her to death with a large pink tanker truck. In spite of a badly injured leg, Dennis tells us, "I was going to drive" (486).