How Evolution Came to Indiana

By Philip Appleman b. 1926 Philip Appleman

In Indianapolis they drive

five hundred miles and end up

where they started: survival

of the fittest. In the swamps

of Auburn and Elkhart,

in the jungles of South Bend,

one-cylinder chain-driven runabouts fall

to air-cooled V-4’s, a-speed gearboxes,

16-horse flat-twin midships engines—

carcasses left behind

by monobloc motors, electric starters,

3-speed gears, six cylinders, 2-chain drive,

overhead cams, supercharged

to 88 miles an hour in second gear, the age

of Leviathan ...

There is grandeur in this view of life,

as endless forms

most beautiful and wonderful

are being evolved.

And then

the drying up, the panic,

the monsters dying: Elcar, Cord,

Auburn, Duesenberg, Stutz—somewhere

out there, the chassis of Studebakers,

Marmons, Lafayettes, Bendixes, all

rusting in high-octane smog,

ashes to ashes, they

end up where they started.

Philip Appleman, “How Evolution Came to Indiana” from New and Selected Poems, 1956-1996. Copyright © 1996 by Phillip Appleman. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Arkansas Press, www.uapress.com.

Source: New and Selected Poems 1956-1996 (University of Arkansas Press, 1996)

Biography

Poet, novelist, editor, and Darwin expert Philip Appleman is known for his biting social commentary and masterful command of form. The author of numerous volumes of poetry, three novels, and half a dozen collections of prose, Appleman’s range of subject matter includes Darwin, politics, morality, and sex. Art Seidenbaum in the Los Angeles Times described Appleman’s second novel, Shame the Devil (1981) as entertaining and . . .

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