#Hart Crane

[seemoreandmore]

There are no stars tonight But those of memory. Yet how much room for memory there is In the loose girdle of soft rain.

Hart Crane, from “FROM MY GRANDMOTHER’S LOVE LETTERS,” THE COMPLETE POEMS OF HART CRANE 

[murderhusbandsblog]

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong // Voyages, Hart Crane // True Love, Sharon Olds // Carolyn Forché // Hannibal, NBC.

[alanreedwrite]

"Unless poetry can absorb the machine, i.e., acclimatize it as naturally and casually as trees, cattle, galleons, castles and all other human associations of the past, then poetry has failed of its full contemporary function. This process does not infer any program of lyrical pandering to the taste of those obsessed by the importance of machinery; nor does it essentially involve even the specific mention of a single mechanical contrivance. It demands, however, along with the traditional qualifications of the poet, an extraordinary capacity for surrender, at least temporarily, to the sensations of urban life. This presupposes, of course, that the poet possesses sufficient spontaneity and gust to convert this experience into positive terms. Machinery will tend to lose its sensational glamour and appear in its true subsidiary order in human life as use and continual poetical allusion subdue its novelty. For, contrary to general prejudice, the wonderment experienced in watching nose dives is of less immediate creative promise to poetry than the familiar gesture of a motorist in the modest act of shifting gears. I mean to say that mere romantic speculation on the power and beauty of machinery keeps it at a continual remove; it cannot act creatively in our lives until, like the unconscious nervous responses of our bodies, its connotations emanate from within -- forming as spontaneous a terminology of poetic reference as the bucolic world of pasture, plow and barn."

– Hart Crane, "Modern Poetry"

[apoemaday]

Exile

by Hart Crane

My hands have not touched pleasure since your hands,— No,—nor my lips freed laughter since ‘farewell,’ And with the day, distance again expands Voiceless between us, as an uncoiled shell. Yet, love endures, though starving and alone. A dove’s wings clung about my heart each night With surging gentleness, and the blue stone Set in the tryst-ring has but worn more bright.

[moonbug]

[monksexualizer]

ohhhthis is SO! (this is about Hart Crane's Voyages II for context)

(Hart Crane: an introduction to the poetry by Herbert A. Leibowitz, 95)

[seekers-who-are-lovers]

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all - ( x )

Are you the new person drawn toward me?

To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;

Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?

Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?

Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction?

Do you think I am trusty and faithful?

Do you see no further than this façade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me?

Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?

Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion? ( x )

His thoughts, delivered to me

From the white coverlet and pillow,

I see now, were inheritance—

Delicate riders of the storm.

Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,

A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,

There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word. ( x )

I see thy limbs that love hath never known

For the first time on this our night of love.

We two together never have lain down;

Now one, adoring, keepeth watch thereof.

See how thy hands are torn—thy gentle hands-:

Beloved, not by me, not by my kiss.

Thy infinite heart to all men open stands:

O I alone, alone, should have that bliss. ( x )

[scholarofgloom]

[whydotheheathenrage]

Had to put my boy Cal to rest tonight. Only 7, but 7 years of love and fun. Buried him tonight with his favorite - catnip!

“The game enforces smirks; but we have seen The moon in lonely alleys make A grail of laughter of an empty ash can, And through all sound of gaiety and quest Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.” — Hart Crane, Chaplinesque

[grandhotelabyss]

Did you mean to put a week off between Pound and Hemingway for the IC? (Cheeky addition: if it was accidental, I'm stumping for the addition of Hart Crane to fill the gap)

Yes, there's a week off for Thanksgiving and a week off for Christmas, just like in a real college. I wrote about Hart Crane here and here. The shade of Bloom will have to forgive me, but, among American modernist poets I don't understand at all, I probably prefer Marianne Moore!

[oflights]

At Melville's Tomb

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath An embassy. Their numbers as he watched, Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells, The calyx of death’s bounty giving back A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph, The portent wound in corridors of shells.

Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil, Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled, Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars; And silent answers crept across the stars.

Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive No farther tides … High in the azure steeps Monody shall not wake the mariner. This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

Hart Crane

[thatwritererinoriordan]

John Berryman jumped off a bridge to his death on January 7, 1972.

trouble by Matthew Dickman

[shelbycarpenter]

[voicelesspiedebates]

Interior

It sheds a shy solemnity,

This lamp in our poor room.

O grey and gold amenity, --

Silence and gentle gloom!

Wide from the world, a stolen hour

We claim, and none may know

How love blooms like a tardy flower

Here in the day's after-glow.

And even should the world break in

With jealous threat and guile,

The world, at last, must bow and win

Our pity and a smile.

–Harold Hart Crane–

[loudlylovingreview]

Hart Crane: The Air Plant

Grand CaymanThis tuft that thrives on saline nothingness,Inverted octopus with heavenward armsThrust parching from a palm-bole hard by the cove⎯A bird almost⎯of almost bird alarms,Is pulmonary to the wind that jarsIts tentacles, horrific in their lurch.The lizard’s throat, held bloated for a fly,Balloons but warily from this throbbing perch.The needles and hack-saws of cactus bleedA milk of earth…