 Poetry: August 01, 2012 Issue [#5184] |
  Poetry
This week: Hart Crane Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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| This is poetry from the minds and the hearts of poets on Writing.Com. The poems I am going to be exposing throughout this newsletter are ones that I have found to be, very visual, mood setting and uniquely done. Stormy Lady |
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Fear
by Hart Crane
The host, he says that all is well
And the fire-wood glow is bright;
The food has a warm and tempting smell,-
But on the window licks the night.
Pile on the logs... Give me your hands,
Friends! No,- it is not fright...
But hold me... somewhere I heard demands...
And on the window licks the night.
The Great Western Plains
by Hart Crane
The little voices of the prairie dogs
Are tireless . . .
They will give three hurrahs
Alike to stage, equestrian, and pullman,
And all unstingingly as to the moon.
And Fifi's bows and poodle ease
Whirl by them centred on the lap
Of Lottie Honeydew, movie queen,
Toward lawyers and Nevada.
And how much more they cannot see!
Alas, there is so little time,
The world moves by so fast these days!
Burrowing in silk is not their way --
And yet they know the tomahawk.
Indeed, old memories come back to life;
Pathetic yelps have sometimes greeted
Noses pressed against the glass.
On July 21, 1899, Clarence Arthur Crane and his wife Grace welcomed Harold "Hart" Crane into their family. Hart's father, Clarence soon became the owner of a large candy manufacturing company and moved his family to Cleveland. Hart's parents fought all the time and two eventually divorced. Hart started writing poetry by the age of thirteen. When he turned seventeen he went to live with his mother on his grandfather's plantation in Cuba for a year. When Hart left his mothers and returned home he met Mrs. William Vaughn Moody, who encouraged him to continue his poetry.
In 1916 his first poem "C33" was published. Hart then went to live in New York where he met Alfred Kreymborg and Maxwell Bodenheim. Hart dove into his writing and a started a novel that he eventually gave up on. Hart then became an associate editor for "The Pagan." Still unsure of what he wanted to do with his life Hart tried to enlist in the military, but he was rejected. After that he moved back to Cleveland and became a reporter for the Cleveland newspaper, "Plain Dealer." Not seeming to find a job he enjoyed he moved on to several other little jobs before accepting a job in one of his father's candy stores. He worked for his father for a year, but the desire to write his poetry had him leave that job too. He published his poem The Tambourine in 1920.
In 1923 he left Cleveland for New York and lived in Greenwich Village. Hart then met Waldo Frank, who helped him find a job at J. Walter Thompson Advertising Company. This job too was short lived. Next he worked for Sweets Catalogue Service. Then he met Otto Kahn who gave Hart a loan so that he could focus on completing his poetry. In 1926 Hart traveled back to his mother's plantation to live and work on his writing. The plantation was destroyed by a hurricane and Hart found himself back in New York in 1927. In 1930 the first edition of The Bridge was published. Hart then worked for a short time for "Fortune" magazine. While working there he was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship. Hart then sailed for Mexico to start writing a Latin-American equivalent of The Bridge.
Hart was still unsure of his life and when the news of his father's death reached him he returned to the United States to settle the estate. On April 27, 1932 Hart committed suicide by jumping overboard on the "Orizaba."
To Brooklyn Bridge
by Hart Crane
How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty--
Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
--Till elevators drop us from our day . . .
I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;
And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,--
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!
Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.
Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . . .
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.
And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,
Thy guerdon . . . Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise:
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.
O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,--
Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path--condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.
Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City's fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .
O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
Thunderclouds,
armadas of ships sailing
on sapphires seas,
with their guns flashing,
cannons clashing,
and smoke bellowing)
across the evening sky.
In the scarlet sunset,
sirens sing,
their alluring voices beckoning
to the souls of sailors
as they perish
on the reefs of enchantment;
urging
lost spirits to rise
and transform
into white winged seagulls
following the storm.
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