‘Permit me voyage…’ It’s Hart Crane’s 114th birthday. As with so many American poets of his and a slightly older generation, I first discovered his work in the old Oxford Book of American Verse in my school library when I was supposed to be writing A-level essays on the Counter-Reformation and the Fronde. There was his vision of Poe in The Bridge: ‘…And why do I often meet your visage here, Your eyes like agate lanterns—on and on Below the toothpaste and the dandruff ads? —And did their riding eyes right through your side, And did their eyes like unwashed platters ride? And Death, aloft,—gigantically down Probing through you—toward me, O evermore! And when they dragged your retching flesh, Your trembling hands that night through Baltimore— That last night on the ballot rounds, did you, Shaking, did you deny the ticket, Poe?...’ And above all there was Voyages, with the magical transition from the first to the second section: ‘…O brilliant kids, frisk with your dog, Fondle your shells and sticks, bleached By time and the elements; but there is a line You must not cross nor ever trust beyond it Spry cordage of your bodies to caresses Too lichen-faithful from too wide a breast. The bottom of the sea is cruel. II And yet this great wink of eternity, Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings, Samite sheeted and processioned where Her undinal vast belly moonward bends, Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love…’ nbu.bg/webs/amb/american/4/crane/voyages.htm All the other stuff – the apostolic tributes from John Berryman and Robert Lowell, the musical homage from Elliott Carter, the academic theorizing – came later. The poems in the Oxford Book lit the flame. lumpy-pudding.tumblr/image/27712865009
Posted on: Sun, 21 Jul 2013 05:22:18 +0000
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