62. The Bridge by Hart Crane
A masterpiece, and one that breaks absolutely every rule that Eratospherian critique here establishes. It is unabashedly ornate, hyper-modified, riddled with archaisms, filled with cataclysmic shifts of tone and diction, unapologetically dense. I’ve returned to it again recently, more well-versed than I once was, and I am amazed at how almost every school of poetry is recalled or prefigured within its diverse yet interrelated parts. And amazed as well as what appears on first read to be the mesmerizingly impenetrable music of surfaces yields up a complexity of thought that clarifies its own mystical leaps of intuition. No less a myth of our times than
The Wasteland, yet one (in Hart Crane's own estimation) less assailed by pessimism. Indeed, despite the grim circumstances of its author’s life, or perhaps because of them, it takes to anguished heart Rilke’s dictum that poetry be, above all else, an act of praise.
This from
Part VI, Quaker Hill...
So, must we from the hawk’s far-stemming view,
Must we descend as worm’s eye to construe
Our love of all we touch, and take it to the Gate
As humbly as a guest who knows himself too late,
His news already told? Yes, while the heart is wrung,
Arise—yes, take this sheaf of dust upon your tongue!
In one last angelus lift throbbing throat—
Listen, transmuting silence with that stilly note
Of pain that Emily, that Isadora knew!
While high from dim elm-chancels hung with dew,
That triple-noted clause of moonlight—
Yes, whip-poor-will, unhusks the heart of fright,
Breaks us and saves, yes, breaks the heart, yet yields
That patience that is armour and that shields
Love from despair—when love foresees the end—
Leaf after autumnal leaf
.................................break off,
..............................................descend—
.................................................. ...........descend—
And this from the final section,
Part VIII, Atlantis...
We left the haven hanging in the night—
Sheened harbor lanterns backward fled the keel.
Pacific here at time’s end, bearing corn, —
Eyes stammer through the pangs of dust and steel.
And still the circular, indubitable frieze
Of heaven’s meditation, yoking wave
To kneeling wave, one song devoutly binds—
The vernal strophe chimes from deathless strings!
O Thou, steeled Cognizance whose leap commits
The agile precincts of the lark’s return;
Within whose lariat sweep encinctured sing
In single chrysalis the many twain, —
Of stars thou art the stitch and stallion glow
And like an organ, Thou, with sound of doom—
Sight, sound and flesh Thou leadest from time’s realm
As love strikes clear direction for the helm.
The book is readily available
http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?keyword=the+bridge+hart++crane&mtype=B& hs.x=0&hs.y=0
Though I salivate for this edition:
http://www.alibris.com/booksearch.detail?invid=11289741801&keyword=the+br idge+hart+crane&qsort=&page=1
Nemo