SpokenVerse | The Broken Tower by Hart Crane (read by Tom O'Bedlam) @SpokenVerse | Uploaded March 2013 | Updated October 2024, 21 minutes ago.
To most readers this will make about as much sense as "dong-dong bell, pussy's in the well" but then, Hart Crane never made a lick of sense: that wasn't his style. Hart Crane is one of my favourite poets. A poem is a work of Art - it's not a recipe, it doesn't have to mean anything nor refer to anything outside itself. A poet can invent his own language and symbolism. It's up to the readers to find it in something that delights or comforts them.
The Artist's main motivation is to set the world to rights - meaning the Artist's world - or to explain what it's like to be them. (Some of them, of course, do it to make money once they hit on a winning formula) Art makes their world more complete, more beautiful, more tolerable. If Art works for the artist then it might work for some of the rest of us, too. Much Art is beautiful lies: it has a lot in common with its commercial cousin, advertising.
What I get from Hart Crane is some of the most beautiful cadences in poetry. They ripple through my brain and down my spine. They're magic spells. I don't have to understand what they mean - e.g.
...the agile precincts of the lark's return...
..spears and assemblies: black drums thrusting on...
..a riptooth of the sky's acetylene..
..a cyclone threshes in the turbine crest...
..thewed of the levin, thunder-shod and lean...
..west, west and south! winds over Cumberland...
..its lashings charmed and malice reconciled...
..how many dawns, chill from his rippling rest...
..her undinal vast belly moonward bends...
..in these poinsettia meadows of her tides...
..this fabulous shadow only the sea keeps...
If you're not convinced then you should read William Logan's article called The Hart Crane Controversy:
poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/182266
Tennessee Williams was strongly influenced by Hart Crane and there are more phrases from Hart Crane in his plays than can be coincidence. You can hear his reading of this poem here:
vimeo.com/58256615
This was Hart Crane's last poem, written just before he was drowned - but even that is controversial.
Painting - Romantic Landscape with Ruined Tower by Thomas Cole (1801-1848)
The bell-rope that gathers God at dawn
Dispatches me as though I dropped down the knell
Of a spent day - to wander the cathedral lawn
From pit to crucifix, feet chill on steps from hell.
Have you not heard, have you not seen that corps
Of shadows in the tower, whose shoulders sway
Antiphonal carillons launched before
The stars are caught and hived in the sun's ray?
The bells, I say, the bells break down their tower;
And swing I know not where. Their tongues engrave
Membrane through marrow, my long-scattered score
Of broken intervals ... And I, their sexton slave!
Oval encyclicals in canyons heaping
The impasse high with choir. Banked voices slain!
Pagodas campaniles with reveilles out leaping-
O terraced echoes prostrate on the plain! ...
And so it was I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice.
My word I poured. But was it cognate, scored
Of that tribunal monarch of the air
Whose thighs embronzes earth, strikes crystal Word
In wounds pledged once to hope - cleft to despair?
The steep encroachments of my blood left me
No answer (could blood hold such a lofty tower
As flings the question true?) -or is it she
Whose sweet mortality stirs latent power?-
And through whose pulse I hear, counting the strokes
My veins recall and add, revived and sure
The angelus of wars my chest evokes:
What I hold healed, original now, and pure ...
And builds, within, a tower that is not stone
(Not stone can jacket heaven) - but slip
Of pebbles, - visible wings of silence sown
In azure circles, widening as they dip
The matrix of the heart, lift down the eyes
That shrines the quiet lake and swells a tower...
The commodious, tall decorum of that sky
Unseals her earth, and lifts love in its shower.
To most readers this will make about as much sense as "dong-dong bell, pussy's in the well" but then, Hart Crane never made a lick of sense: that wasn't his style. Hart Crane is one of my favourite poets. A poem is a work of Art - it's not a recipe, it doesn't have to mean anything nor refer to anything outside itself. A poet can invent his own language and symbolism. It's up to the readers to find it in something that delights or comforts them.
The Artist's main motivation is to set the world to rights - meaning the Artist's world - or to explain what it's like to be them. (Some of them, of course, do it to make money once they hit on a winning formula) Art makes their world more complete, more beautiful, more tolerable. If Art works for the artist then it might work for some of the rest of us, too. Much Art is beautiful lies: it has a lot in common with its commercial cousin, advertising.
What I get from Hart Crane is some of the most beautiful cadences in poetry. They ripple through my brain and down my spine. They're magic spells. I don't have to understand what they mean - e.g.
...the agile precincts of the lark's return...
..spears and assemblies: black drums thrusting on...
..a riptooth of the sky's acetylene..
..a cyclone threshes in the turbine crest...
..thewed of the levin, thunder-shod and lean...
..west, west and south! winds over Cumberland...
..its lashings charmed and malice reconciled...
..how many dawns, chill from his rippling rest...
..her undinal vast belly moonward bends...
..in these poinsettia meadows of her tides...
..this fabulous shadow only the sea keeps...
If you're not convinced then you should read William Logan's article called The Hart Crane Controversy:
poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/182266
Tennessee Williams was strongly influenced by Hart Crane and there are more phrases from Hart Crane in his plays than can be coincidence. You can hear his reading of this poem here:
vimeo.com/58256615
This was Hart Crane's last poem, written just before he was drowned - but even that is controversial.
Painting - Romantic Landscape with Ruined Tower by Thomas Cole (1801-1848)
The bell-rope that gathers God at dawn
Dispatches me as though I dropped down the knell
Of a spent day - to wander the cathedral lawn
From pit to crucifix, feet chill on steps from hell.
Have you not heard, have you not seen that corps
Of shadows in the tower, whose shoulders sway
Antiphonal carillons launched before
The stars are caught and hived in the sun's ray?
The bells, I say, the bells break down their tower;
And swing I know not where. Their tongues engrave
Membrane through marrow, my long-scattered score
Of broken intervals ... And I, their sexton slave!
Oval encyclicals in canyons heaping
The impasse high with choir. Banked voices slain!
Pagodas campaniles with reveilles out leaping-
O terraced echoes prostrate on the plain! ...
And so it was I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice.
My word I poured. But was it cognate, scored
Of that tribunal monarch of the air
Whose thighs embronzes earth, strikes crystal Word
In wounds pledged once to hope - cleft to despair?
The steep encroachments of my blood left me
No answer (could blood hold such a lofty tower
As flings the question true?) -or is it she
Whose sweet mortality stirs latent power?-
And through whose pulse I hear, counting the strokes
My veins recall and add, revived and sure
The angelus of wars my chest evokes:
What I hold healed, original now, and pure ...
And builds, within, a tower that is not stone
(Not stone can jacket heaven) - but slip
Of pebbles, - visible wings of silence sown
In azure circles, widening as they dip
The matrix of the heart, lift down the eyes
That shrines the quiet lake and swells a tower...
The commodious, tall decorum of that sky
Unseals her earth, and lifts love in its shower.
