Profile of Hart Crane

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This is poetry and the American produced and recorded by station KPFA in Berkeley
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California under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National
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Association of educational broadcasters. This program is a profile of the poet
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Hart Crane as seen primarily through a reading of a few of his poems.
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The program as presented by Robert Bellew from the University of California at Berkeley.
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On the 21st of July 1899 in Cleveland
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Ohio was born to Clarence a crane and the former
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Grace hocked their only child my son
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christened Harold Hart Crane just
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33 years later. This boy grown a man committed
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suicide by leaping off the stern of the vessel that was bringing him back to New
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York from an extended stay in Mexico.
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From the literary world there has come an outpouring of analogies and remembrances
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unparalleled in the history of this country and comparable sense only to the
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impact of the recent death of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.
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Yet even this testimonial was inadequate to express the sense of loss experienced
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by the younger poets and writers particularly for in the few short years he allowed
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himself Harold Hart Crane had become a poet who represented in the
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quintessence their hopes their aspirations and
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their four doomed defeats.
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John Donne once wrote No man is an island
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of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent
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a part of the main.
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Now it is one thing to understand this philosophic way it is another thing to
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feel oneself comfortably and securely a part of the main
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feeling that for most people is the principal legacy from their parents.
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Crane's father was a wealthy son of a wealthy family. He was a
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successful businessman in his own right. He was impetuous
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self-centered and in most things determined to have his own way in his own way.
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Official History does not record so faithfully the mother's failings
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but it is clear that she was a neurotic woman whose nervous health was fragile
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and who could not keep from unloading a good deal of her grief onto the head of her remit your son
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in this tug of war. This electric atmosphere air what he
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called quote an avalanche of bitterness and wailing
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unquote Crane's personality probably started its premature
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dissolution.
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Hart Crane's father saw him as a child who grew violently ill with
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nausea and high fever over such ridiculous causes as a minor
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social phobia or slight and as a young man who defiantly
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stated he would devote his life to poetry. Now this as a
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summary of the character of his only son was something to fill the elder crane with
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outrage and his only reaction for many years was to try to break the
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boy's will. Conversely crane was
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outraged by his father's treatment of his mother and felt no understanding love or
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sympathy coming from his father.
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Hence it was almost impossible to return any.
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At the height of the trouble in 1999 Harold crane had
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signalled his total sympathy with his mother by becoming Hart
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Crane. It's significant that at the age of 20 the
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time of his parents break up he wrote and otherwise rather
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juvenile poem called forgetfulness which contains these
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lines.
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Forget fullness. Why. Why does a
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blasted treed. And it may stunned the civil into
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prophecy.
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Bury the gods.
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I can't remember much forgetful mass.
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Already the note of Oblivion is struck and already the almost mystical insights
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are there. There is the blasted tree symbol of his forever ruined emotional
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center.
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There is the symbol stunned into prophecy as he was to seek after
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and be stunned by the mystical vision. And there is the God of
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Barry.
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And so it was in a time when intellectually men were feeling themselves isolated.
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When Hemingway pronounced his last generation when Dada ism and
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other literary movements were invented to express this feeling all no doubt with
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some reason but one feels with a good deal of self pity and
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glory in the painting. Hart Crane reached his majority
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and truly an island began a decade of heroic effort
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not to express his isolation but to fuse himself with the
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continent of man.
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Could he overleaped his immediate parents and find a sense of belonging through his maternal
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grandmother who still lived. And toward him he felt a great deal of affection.
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Something of that nature seems involved in the poem entitled My
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grandmother's love letters.
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There are no stasis tonight but those of
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memory. Yet how much room for
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memory there is in the loose girdle of soft rain.
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There is even room enough for the letters of my mother's mother Elizabeth
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that have been pressed into a corner of the room that they have
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brown and soft and liable to Mallard
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as snow
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over the greatness of such space steps must be gentle.
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It is all by an invisible white hair.
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It trembles as Burchill limbs webbing the air
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and I ask myself Are your fingers
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long enough to play old keys that I would echo
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is the silence strong enough to carry back the music to its source
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and back to you again as though to our.
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Yet I wouldn't need my grandmother by the hand through much of what she
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would not understand.
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And so I stumble and the
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rain continues on the roof with such a
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sob gently pitying laugh.
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Between early stays in New York where he established some of those literary acquaintances that
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were to serve so ambiguously throughout his life. He returned for
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over a year to Cleveland during which time he made some of his most meaningful
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friendships with obscure artists William Summers the painter
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whose work Crane brought to a larger attention was won and through Somers.
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Ernest Nelson both Somers and Nelson were older man
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summers and kept painting despite poverty the long work day family
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responsibilities. But Ernest Nelson had been driven by these
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forces to quit a very promising beginning both as poet and painter.
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The isolation and loneliness and the obscure heroism of Nelson
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touched crane. And when the older man died crane wrote
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praise for an urn.
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One of the most beautiful allergies in American literature in
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Nelson he saw combined the eternal sadness of Pyrrho and the
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enormous sensual gayety of Robert Lay's Gargantua with a
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living wisdom which could survive the storm.
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His remembrance of their talks on the meaning of life and death is
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ironically commented on in the poem by the clock in the crime of Tory
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where Nelson's body is reduced to ashes as a language might
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be reduced to its component idioms.
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Phrase for an urn in memoriam Ernest
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Nelson.
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It was a kind and northern face that mingled in such
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exile guys the everlasting eyes of peril
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and of Gargantua the laughter.
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His thoughts delivered to me from the white coverlet and Pellow.
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I see now where inheritances delicate
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Riders of the star
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the slant the moon on the slanting hill once moved toward
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present to months of what the dead keep living still.
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And such assessments of the soul as perched in the crematory
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lobby the insistent clock commented on
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touching as well upon our praise of glory as proper to the tie.
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Still having in my gold hair
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I cannot see that broken brow and miss the
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dry sound of the Strachey
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cross-eyed usage.
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It's a
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gathering of the is well-meant Didion's into the Smokies spring that fills the
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suburbs where they will be lost.
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They are no trophies of the sign.
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Toward the end of this period. In the summer of 19 22 the
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first of his larger concepts became in actuality a
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poem called for the marriage of Faust us and Helen. The
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poem was in three sections. In his own words quote I was really
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building a bridge between the so-called classic experience of beauty and many
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divergent realities of our seeding confused chaos of today
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unquote. So that we see once more the effort to connect himself with
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some larger human scheme.
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It was shortly after this that I began to think of and write some fragments of what
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seems in retrospect the inevitable major effort with the inevitable
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title the bridge in which Brooklyn Bridge was to serve as the
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central symbol of a long poem that was to be as he put it
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quote a synthesis of America and its structural identity
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unquote. Meanwhile he had returned to New York and in
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1924 and 25 wrote the second of his major
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compositions the series of six poems called voyages
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some years earlier at the age of 16.
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A few days after his first acceptance by a New York little magazine
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he accompanied his mother to the hart plantation on the Isle of
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Pines south of Cuba. Dating from this voyage to the
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tropics islands the whole paraphernalia of the
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sea and heard his poetry forever.
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The sea fascinated him. That great land lessness
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that great waste of contained in the form and formlessness of
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promise and struck and continued to vibrate throughout his
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life the deepest chords of his being.
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This series of six poems is without doubt the noblest evocation of the sea in
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American poetry.
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I shall read the first three sections.
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Voyages
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above the fresh ruffles of the surf bright stripe and urchins fly
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each other with signs they have contrived a conquest for shall shocks
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and their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed gaily digging and
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scattering.
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And in answer to their trouble interjections the sun beats lightning on the
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waves the waves fold funder on the sand.
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And could they hear me I would tell them
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oh brilliant kids frisk with your dog fondle your
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shells and sticks bleached by time and the elements. But
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there is a line you must not cross nor ever trust beyond it
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spry cordage of your bodies to caresses to like
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and faithful from none too wide a brass
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the bottom of the sea is cruel.
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And yet there is a grey wing
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of eternity of the rimless
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floods unfettered leeward ings Samite
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sheet head and procession where no vast
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valet would ban.
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Laughing the rap inflections of our law.
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Hey there see those die a Paisan now
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on scrolls of silver snowiest sentences the
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sceptered terror of whose sessions Rennes as her demeanors
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motion while all about the piety
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is of lovers and views. A non-word
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eyes bellows off scions Salva dogs tied to the Crocus
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last of the stock is in these poinsettia meadows
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of higher tides GEOS of islands all my prodigal
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complete the dark confessions have a spanish.
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Monarch cowhide turning the shoulders why in the hours
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and hasten while have Penelas rich man's past superscription
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of bent foam and wave hastened while they are true.
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Sleep. Death. Desire. Close round one
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instant in one floating flower.
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Bind us in time of seasons clear
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and all.
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Oh men strode galleons of carob fire
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bequeath us to know our foolish one tale is answered in the
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vortex of our grave.
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See why I spend drift
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the die.
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Infinit Khan sanguine idiot.
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Bad as this tender theme of the view of the light retrieves
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from sea planes where the sky resigns of brass that every
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wave and thrones Wyo ribboned water lanes I
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wind our live then scattered with no stroke wide from your
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side to this hour the sea also
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had and so admitted through
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black swollen gates that must arrest all distance otherwise.
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Past where Ling pillars and live had eminence the light
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wrestling their incessant play with light.
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Stop kissing Stata through wave on wave on to your
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body rocking and where death. If she had
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presumes no carnage bought this single change
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upon the stage. Follow the line from dawn to
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dawn the silken skill of the Terrans
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member months of song.
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Are meant to me a voyage of. Into
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your hands.
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During the next two years with most of the work being done in two
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fantastic surges of creativity he all but completed his master
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work the bridge the generosity of the banker auto con was
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largely responsible for freeing him for most of this period from earning a living
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and the first of his creative bursts occurred on the Isle of Pines to which he had
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returned to carry on his writing there for a period of time
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roughly the month of August 1926. His creativity
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achieved some kind of infinite push of powers and at the end of
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that time he had completed about three quarters of the bread plus a number of his
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best shorter pieces.
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Among them Royal Palm.
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Green rustling leaves more than regal charities
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drift coolly from that tower of whispered light
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I made the known tides of the desperate deeds. I
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watch the sun's most gracious anchorite climb up as by
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communings year on year on a turn of the earth or OT
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and the great trunk that's elephantine and rear it's
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frond ings side in a theory will follow
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ever through less and beyond that you would have swept the
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jungle presses with hot love and tender old have our death word breath
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to see it. Graves as the horizons
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launched above immortality they are sending emerald
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bright our fountain and soul you da crown in view
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unshackled casual of its eyes you're at a height as though it's
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so hard such wise through a heaven tool.
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Not long after his dedicating this magnificent poem to his mother
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their relationship began to disintegrate as he realized he was unable to bear
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both her agony and his own. After
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that he made what shift he could be courageous or cowardly
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to cut himself off from her life and succeeded.
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Meanwhile his father's second wife had died and he had married a third
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time. Hart Crane became fond of his stepmother. He
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became a good deal less sure of the relative guilt and the troubles between his father and mother
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and his Crane's growing reputation began to convince his father of the validity
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of Crane his dedication to portray a kind of reconciliation
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with his father took place. His father gave him a small but steady financial
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support in these last years.
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Though Crane never lost his incredible vitality he is
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asked for a living. Nor the magnificent physique which withstood every hardship
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his life after 1926 was an accelerated tale of
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disintegration.
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I said earlier that he was an islander trying to create a bridge between
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himself and the mainland of man. Perhaps that was wrong.
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Perhaps he spent his life trying to be a bridge first between his
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parents. Next between his mother and her sanity.
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Next between his talent and an abstract concept of beauty. Next
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between the real imperfect America and our noble mystical destiny.
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In the end perhaps it was less his failure than that of the
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persons and things he tried to unify as if it
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Lantus that mythical continent which had for so long intrigued him
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had sunk into the welter of water leaving him an abstract
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bridge of language in the midst of the sea whose ends
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anchored to an old reality.
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Out of the mother soil of America the legendary Pocahontas
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of Crain's epic poem the bridge out of the fic conduct a
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spiritually handed on to the Pioneer Woman from the tragic Indian mother
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come such man such signs restless
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Wanderers after majestic clouds that looked like mountains
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or rather the explorers of mountains
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as you said as clouds.
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From Part two of the bridge. The section
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called Indiana.
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The Morning Glory climbing in the morning along over the lentil on its wire a
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vibe closes before the DAs
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firs in its song as I close my eyes.
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And bison founder rends my dreams no mas for once
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my room was torn my boy when you did
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your first cry of the prairie's dog your father
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knew that and though we'd buried him behind as far back on the Gold
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trail. Then his last day.
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But you who dropped the side to grasp the O.R.
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knew not nor heard.
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How are we to prodigal once rode off to wave
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seminary Hill a gay goodbye.
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We found God lavish there in Colorado but passing a sly
[25:06 - 25:13]
pebble sang the fire cat slunk away in glistening through the
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sluggard freshets came in golden syllables loosed from the clay his
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gleaming name.
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A dream called Eldorado was his town that rose up shambling in the Nuggets
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way. It had no charter but a promised crowd of claims
[25:30 - 25:35]
to stay but we are too late too
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early howsoever one nothing out of 59 those years
[25:39 - 25:44]
but yielded promise yielded to us never
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and barren years.
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The long train back.
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I huddled in the shade of wagon tenting looked out once and saw a bent
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westward passing on a stumbling Jade a homeless squaw.
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Perhaps a half breed on her slender back
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she cradled of Davis body. Riding without
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rain highrise strange for an
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Indians were not black but sharp with
[26:24 - 26:27]
pain and light twins stock as
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they seemed to shine in the gaze of all our silent man the long team line
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and two she saw me.
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When their Violet haze lit with love shine
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I held you up by you suddenly the boulder knew that mere words could not have brought us
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nearer.
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She nodded.
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And that smile across her shoulder will still endear her as
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long as Jim your father's memory is warm.
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Yes Larry now you're going to see.
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Remember YOU were the first before Ned and this farm first
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born remember.
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And since then all that's left to me of Jim has
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folks like mine came out of Arrowhead. And
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you're the only one with eyes like him.
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Kentucky bred. I'm
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standing still. I'm all
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I'm half of stone.
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Oh hold me in those eyes and gaging blue.
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There is rather stubborn years gleam in the tone where
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gold is true.
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Down the damned Turnpike to the river's edge. Perhaps I'll
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hear the mare's hoofs to the far right me from Rio
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and you'll keep your pledge I know your word.
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Come back to Indiana not too late. Or will you be
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a ranger to the end.
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Good bye good bye.
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I shall always wake you Larry.
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Travel light. STRANGER.
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Sign my friend.
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This profile of Hart Crane was presented by Robert Bellew poetry in the American was
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produced and recorded by KPFA in Berkeley California under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio
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Center and distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the
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NABC Radio Network.