Thank you, it's nice to be here.
If I talk like this without the mic, is it OK?
Can you hear me, if I talk about this level?
Like I said, it's nice to be here
because I've heard about this program for so many years,
and so many friends of mine have visited here,
and I have lots of friends teaching here.
So it's a real pleasure to be here.
Lois and I were talking in the car
from the airport about how nowadays
most of the time when one gives a reading,
you usually read with someone else.
Since poetry readings, no matter how good they are,
should never go for more than, say, 15 minutes,
I usually only read for about 20 minutes, or 25 minutes.
And I've always wanted to, and I have
at times when I read alone, to spend some of the time reading
other poets' poetry, and I decided to do that tonight.
I want to read one poem by Hart Crane, who
is a favorite poet of mine, a poem called "Voyages."
I'll start with that, and then I'll read some of my own work.
If you're not familiar with Hart Crane, and this poem
in particular, it might be hard to pick up a lot
or get a lot from this poem, so I'll
give you a brief introduction of the poem.
It's a love poem.
It's also a sea poem.
It intermingles, mixes the imagery
of both of those things.
And if you just look at the poem,
or try to hear it as an ancient sort of romance story,
boy meets girl--
in this case, boy meets boy with Hart Crane--
they fall in love.
One lover decides that it's no good and they break up.
The other lover, the poet, is crushed by this, very saddened,
and destroyed, et cetera.
And then at the end of the poem, even though the love
is dead between these two living human beings,
the poet still believes in Love, with a capital "L."
That's basically what goes on in the poem.
It's in six sections.
There's lots of strange words in here,
et cetera, that I still have to look up after looking them
up about 10 times.
But if you just try to hear the texture or the density,
the richness of the language, I think you'll get a lot out
of the poem or something.
And then you can read the poem, if you like it, on the page.
"Voyages."
One.
"Above the fresh ruffles of the surf,
bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.
They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,
and their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed,
gaily digging and scattering.
And in answer to their treble interjections,
the sun beats lightning on the waves,
the waves fold thunder on the sand.
And could they hear me I would tell them, 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 to two wide a breast.
The bottom of the sea is cruel."
Now, he's talking about the sea in this poem
in the second section.
"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.
Take this Sea, whose diapason knells
on scrolls of silver snowy sentences, the sceptred terror
of whose sessions rends as her demeanors motion well or ill,
all but the pieties of lovers' hands.
And onward, as bells off San Salvador
salute the crocus lustres of the stars,
in these poinsettia meadows of her tides, adagios of islands,
O my Prodigal, complete the dark confessions her veins spell.
Mark how her turning shoulders wind the hours,
and hasten while her penniless rich palms
pass superscription on bent foam and wave.
Hasten, while they are true--
sleep, death, desire, close round
one instant in one floating flower.
Bind us in time, O Seasons clear, and awe.
O minstrel galleons of Carib fire,
bequeath us to no earthly shore until is answered
in the vortex of our grave the seal's wide spindrift gaze
towards paradise."
Three.
"Infinite consanguinity it bears,
this tendered theme of you that light retrieves from sea plains
where the sky resigns a breast that every wave enthrones.
While ribboned water lanes I wind
are laved and scattered with no stroke
wide from your side, whereto this hour
the sea lifts, also, reliquary hands.
And so, admitted through black swollen gates
that must arrest all distance otherwise, past whirling
pillars and lithe pediments, light wrestling
there incessantly with light.
Star kissing star through wave on wave onto your body rocking!
And where death, if shed, presumes
no carnage but this single change,
upon the steep floor flung from dawn
to dawn the silken skilled transmemberment of song.
Permit me voyage, love, into your hands."
Four.
"Whose counted smile of hours and days,
suppose I know as spectrum of the sea and pledge vastly now
parting gulf and gulf of wings, whose circles bridge,
I know, from the palms to the severe chilled albatross's
white immutability.
No stream of greater love advancing now than,
singing, this mortality alone through clay
aflow immortally to you.
All fragrance irrefragably, and claim madly
meeting logically in this hour and region that
is ours to wreathe again.
Portending eyes and lips, and making
told the chancel port and portion of our June.
Shall they not stem and close in our steps
bright staves of flowers and quills
today as I must first be lost in fatal tides to tell?
In signature of the incarnate word,
the harbor shoulders to resign in mingling mutual blood,
transpiring as foreknown and widening
noon within your breast for gathering
all bright insinuations that my years have caught.
For islands where must lead inviolably blue latitudes
and levels of your eyes.
In this still, expectant calm, receive the secret oar
and petals of all love."
Five.
"Meticulous, past midnight in clear rime,
infrangible and lonely, smooth as though cast together
in one merciless white blade, the bay
estuaries fleck the hard sky limits as if too brittle or too
clear to touch!
The cables of our sleep, so swiftly filed,
already hang, shred ends from remembered stars.
One frozen trackless smile--
what words can strangle this deaf moonlight?
For we are overtaken.
Now no cry, no sword can deflect this tidal wedge.
Slow tyranny of moonlight, moonlight loved and changed.
"There's nothing like this in the world," you say,
knowing I cannot touch your hand and look, too,
into that godless cleft of sky where nothing turns but dead
sands flashing.
"And never to quite understand!"
No, in all the argosy of your bright hair,
I dream nothing so flagless as this piracy.
But now, draw in your head, alone and too tall here.
Your eyes already in the slant of drifting foam.
Your breath sealed by the ghosts I do not know.
Draw in your head and sleep the long way home."
And the last section.
"Where icy and bright dungeons lift of swimmers
their lost morning eyes, and ocean rivers, churning,
shift green borders under stranger skies.
Steadily as a shell secretes its beating leagues of monotone,
or as many waters trough the sun's red kelson
past the cape's wet stone.
O rivers mingling toward the sky and harbor
of the phoenix' breast.
My eyes pressed black against the prow, thy derelict
and blinded guest.
Waiting, afire, what name, unspoke, I cannot claim.
Let thy waves rear more savage than the death of kings,
some splintered garland for the seer.
Beyond siroccos harvesting the solstice thunders, crept away,
like a cliff swinging or a sail flung into April's inmost day.
Creation's blithe and petalled word
to the lounged goddess when she rose, conceding dialogue
with eyes that smile unsearchable repose.
Still fervid covenant, Belle Isle,
unfolded floating dais before, which
rainbows twine continual hair.
Belle Isle, white echo of the oar!
The imaged Word, it is, that holds hushed willows anchored
in its glow.
It is the unbetrayable reply whose accent
no farewell can know."
Hart Crane.