Hart Craine

HART CRANE

______________

Miss Crane as Europa

Male Sapphic Modernism

Letter to Miss Tate

Highstepping Hysteric

Letter to Yvor Winters

_____________________

Miss Crane as Europa

“Was he aware of the

incredible deviousness

of his language?”

—Paul Bowles, Foreword

O My Land, My Friends

“I have been driven at last

to the parks. The first night

brought me a most strenuous

wooing and the largest

instrument I have handled.

Europa and the bull are

entirely passé. As this

happened only two nights

ago, I am modest and

satisfied. Still, I am

uneasy. I fear for all the

anti-climaxes that are surely

in store for me. Like Alec,

I yearn for new worlds to

conquer, and I fear that

there are only a few

insignificant peninsulas

left.”

—Hart Crane, O My Land,

My Friends: The Selected

Letters of Hart Crane: To

Wilbur Underwood [Cleveland,

Ohio] 4^th of July [1922], The

Selected Letters of Hart Crane

Male Sapphic Modernism

“I often wish we could get

together and read aloud—

there are so few people

who like that mutual

pastime any more.”

—Hart Crane in a letter

to Wilbur Underwood

[Cleveland, Ohio] 4^th

of July [1922], The

Selected Letters of

Hart Crane

I suppose it takes one—

To know one as far as

Size queens are concerned

And both these letters seem

To hint (“WHOOPS”?) that…

But besides that—

Letters are like more like

Readings in that orality rules

Rather than simply reading

Prose since letters swoop

Down out of the aether with

Little pretense of Olympia.

Although this letter—

Of 1922 seems so camp &

Relevant even now almost

A century later as does the

Other communiqués here

Within this juicy volume.

Size queen mythology—

Once so chic & in vogue

So full of mythopoetic

Creatures like Europa &

Her Bull, well, honey…

Not that size isn’t—

The last avant garde or

Anything like that but

Still a hung Cisco Kid

Still seems to have its

Pancho aficionados &

Queer Theory shocked

Academics in a Twit…

The Dyke Contingent—

Of Sapphic Modernism

At a recent conference

Objected to the shocking

Backdrop of a well-hung

Hispanic male during a

Speaker’s QT lecture…

Which seems to—

Indicate a QT factional

Dispute deep in the

Butch bosom of Lesbos

Queer Theory which

Needs to be discussed…

Letter to Miss Tate

“Euthanasia”—where you hit

humanity a few slaps, but in

so interesting a way!”

—Hart Crane, Letter to Allen

Tate [Cleveland, Ohio]

Wednesday / July 19, 1922

Your poem is—

So creative, my dear, where

The ordinary “character”

Portrait is merely analytic

And, generally, unimportant

(at least in poetry).

And you needn’t, my dear—

Be afraid of running too

Squarely into Miss Eliot with

Work like this.

You’re such an excellent—

Bitch queen, giving praise

With an edge and beauty,

Allen. That downward slant

Of your damnations, so gay!

Your marriage? Well, dear—

It sounds ominous. Think well,

Beforehand. Are you easily

Satisfied? That’s the main

Danger. Affectionately, Hart

Highstepping Hysteric

“I’m glad to hear—

that you feel lie commenting

on The Bridge…”

—Hart Crane, Letter to Yvor

Winters, 190 Columbia Heights

[Brooklyn, New York] January

27 [1930]

Tate is reviewing it—

For The Hound & Horn,

Cowley for the New Republic,

Schneider for the Chicago

Eve. Post.

That leaves Poetry & The Nation.

I recently read the “Indiana”

Section to Harriet Monroe. There

Aren’t that many openings for

Any of us.

I’m eager to read—

Your exposé of Robinson Jeffers.

I’ve always felt that Jeffers was

Sincere—but that doesn’t quite

Suffice. Somewhat “gifted”—

To use a horrible word.

But everything—

He as written has given me a

Vague nausea. He’s really just

A Highstepping Hysteric, I’m

Afraid.

Letter to Yvor Winters

“Your disparagement of—

The Bridge surprised me

Considerably, dearest Yvor”

—Hart Crane, Patterson,

New York / June 4, 1930

Such hypocrisy, my dear Yvor—

You’ve simply outdone yourself!

Misrepresenting your prejudices—

Toward a biological fact or it just

Your own autobiographical approach

To gay poetry these days?

Of course, you’ve the right—

To be str8t & dish any work of art

Or personality as often as you see

Fit, but I’m less certain that your

Validity as a critic is strengthened

By permitting your own prejudices

To blur the text before you on the

Printed page…

Your homophobic rant—

Certainly takes advantage of your

Hetero persuasions against certain

Features & directions repugnant

To you in The Bridge.

It doesn’t seem to have mattered—

Which sections or lines to cite for

You to exaggerate, misappropriate—

Or just confuse to make your rant

More convincing.

Anyone can read “Indiana”—

And realize that it’s not some tacky,

Mawkish memorandum on queers

Anymore than The Bridge is some

Kind of gay undertaking daring to

Span the morality & high morals

Of the East River.

You assume The Bridge is an epic—

When we both know our present

Stage of cultural development simply

Negates such an organic mythology.

Were you trying to burden me with

Traditional pedantic trappings so that

You could chastise me like an unruly

Whitmanesque schoolboy?

Surely, my dear, tenure at Stanford—

Hasn’t dulled you senses with tacky

Folk lore or caused you to betray with

Such premature gusto “The River” as

Some kind of turgid anti-climax skuzzy

Whitman dish unmastered to any

Unforeseen degree other than merely

Masturbating “purple passages”?

C’mon now, Queen Yvor—

Your petticoat is showing, my dear.

Accusing me of “Moral Surrender”

And “Reversion of the Species” or

Heaven knows what else—it’s simply

Laughable for you to distort my

Innocent poem as some kind of

Terrible “Behavioristic Betrayal.”

The next thing you’ll be doing—

Is accusing Shakespeare of gay

Homicidal inclinations because

He created Macbeth. Again, your

Notions of what is feeble in my

Character offers false premises.

My acknowledgment in The Bridge—

Of Whitman’s influence as “Not

Greatest, thou—not first, not last—

But near” [line 200 in “Cape

Hatteras”]—apparently, this line

Discolored the entire poem in

Your estimation. Not gay enough?

My so-called unflattering—

“Moment to moment” inspirational

Limp to complete The Bridge in

5 years apparently doesn’t fit into

Your Poker game mentality…

Reshuffling the cards—

Sustaining something-or-other

(“Differentiations of experience”)

Into a winning hand on a Saturday

Night schmoozing with the boys…

The Wreckage of Hart Crane

“One thing he has demonstrated—

the impossibility of getting anywhere

with the Whitmanian inspiration. No

writer of comparable ability has struggled

with it before, and, with Mr. Crane’s

wreckage in view, it seems highly unlikely

that any writer of comparable genius

will struggle with it again.”

—Yvor Winter, "The Progress of Hart Crane," Poetry 36 (June 1930), 153, 164-65.

The wreckage—or should I say the sinkage—of Miss Crane recently only confirms my astute criticism of literary genius in dishing both Miss Crane & Miss Whitman.

First the wreckage of The Bridge—now the sinkage of the Poet. Both incredibly tragic events—but both of them foretold by my foreboding predictions of doom.

It is now impossible for Miss Crane to recover herself. In any event, she has given us plenty of happy sailors and some good times when the word gets out that yes, indeed, “The Fleet’s in!!!”

As Miss Logan in The New York Times review of Miss Crane’s Collected Poems snidely remarked—Hart Crane was good at mooching sugar daddies and giving head to horny young sailorboys.

His last mooch-job, a Guggenheim down to Mexico to trick with the Cisco Kid and butchy Hispanic hustlers was simply a total disaster—just like the rest of his failed career as a Modernist Poet—a pansy Sapphic Modernist one at that.

Just as Djuna Barnes or Harry & Caresse Crosby who published the Black Sun version of The Bridge in Paris. Or Peggy Robson who typed and retyped the final texts of the poem Crane sent to Paris.

Just ask Walker Evans, the photographer, whose photos Crane used instead of Joseph Stella’s oil paintings of the Brooklyn Bridge. Stella’s heroic paintings were much too butch & macho—something like Evans was needed. Small photos to emphasize the gay intimacy & effeminate inwardness of Crane’s vision.

Perhaps I was too hetero, too full of what Gertrude Stein called “Patriarchal Poetry” expecting Crane to live up to my more male, heroic Pound Era aesthetics. Can I help it if I was offended by every queer line & homo section of The Bridge?

It is necessary, before attempting to dish Miss Crane’s demise, to place him in the proper genre and to give as accurate an account as one is able of his so-called theme.

1 The Bridge cannot be called a gay epic, in spite of its endeavor to create and embody a homosexual myth, because it has no narrative framework and so lacks the formal unity of a str8t epic.

2 It is not didactic, because there is no logical exposition with all its faggoty ideas; neither Homer nor Dante could possibly supply any true standard of comparison.

3 The structure we shall find is lyrical; but the poem is not a single lyric, but rather a collection of gay cabaret swan songs on themes more or less related and loosely dumped on each other.

4 The model, in so far as there is one, is obviously the God Gay Grey Poet Miss Whitman, whom the author proclaims in this book as his Master (Masturbator).

But now Miss Crane is dead—dead like Harry Crosby in the Hotel des Aristes in New York. A double suicide, an act of absurd violence without explanation, a grisly, sensational death that stunned everybody just as Crane’s absurd suicide from the railing of the Orizaba into the pale green shark-infested Caribbean shocked everybody.

I know I was simply shocked as well—but then it was bound to happen. What did Crane leave behind? Several lyrics that one might be tempted to call great, and in both books several charming minor lyrics and many scattered, magnificent fragments.

Let’s forget about his so-called pretensions at tres gay impossible Whitmanesque inspiration. No writer of comparable ability has struggled with it since, and, now with Miss Crane’s wreckage a la sinkage in shocking view, it seems highly unlikely that any writer of comparable genius will struggle with it again.

Miss Crane is not alone in this danger; it is one of the greatest dangers of the entire body of modern gay poetry—whether anti-intellectualist like Sapphic Modernism or its man-loving mongrel twin sister Queer Modernism.

It can be seen in the Poet Laureateship shit of Miss Anne Duffy—the eternal Grande Dame of British Poetry. The first & last & only female Poet Laureate that will ever grace the wonderful waves of butchy Britannia.

The exceedingly butchy laureates of the past such as the exquisitely devilish & nefarious wife-killer Ted Hughes surely will make a come-back with the next male dynasty.

Or the American Poet Laureate Kay Ryan—another fine example of what to expect from GLBT Poetics.

The dangers potential in the style of these first two Sapphic Modernist Poet Laureates has become actual and almost smothering so.

Recently, it can be seen in a good deal of the latest work of Alex Dimitrov, a 26-year-old rising poet, who wears a black leather jacket with matching black boots and jeans for his salon soirees. Sly and delicate, he is the founder of Wilde Boys, a roving salon for self-described queer poets at which attendees lounge fetchingly and flirtation comes in the guise of academic one-upmanship.

According to the Fashion and Style section of the snotty New York Times, this gaggle of young queens gather at dumpy, art-filled apartments on lower Fifth Avenue to do poetry. Stylishly swank, dirty and disheveled, slimly tailored, these fag pretenders cruise one another at the bar before settling into various parlors, which are tackily furnished with porno books, Midcentury Modern chairs and a large Negro painting by Miss Mapplethorpe.

Every seat is filled with slumming queens — a common sight at this makeshift Greenwich Village salon. No fewer than twelve fags crammed onto the same beige fainting couch, cocktails in hand. Handsome waiters squeezing through, young hustlers passing out in the bedrooms, platters of steak on toast, shrimp on skewers and salmon in cucumber cups.

It can be seen in a good deal of the latest work of Dennis Crosby, who, while revolutionizing the gay word, spends an appalling lot of detailed time chatting up gossipy email about bad boyz, suicide and the like.

I regret above all to add, that in the last three or four years’ work of Miss Dennis Cooper, her literary experiments in perpetual porno motion are becoming so repetitious as to appear very nearly mechanical or even static.

Miss Cooper, though a writer of great range and mastery, in all likelihood, more than any of these other notable nonentities, is like Hart Crane bound to be the victim of his own Sadomasochism—just as all intellectual writers like boyish Rimbaud whom he emulates eventually end up becoming.

Miss [Robert] Frost, on the other hand, at the age of one-hundred-fifty-years, seems to continue to grow amazingly. While most poets like Miss Dimitrov and Miss Cooper appear to be disintegrating fairly early, Miss Frost continues to crank it out unashamedly and unabashedly in his Amherst mansion…

Pale Fire

View of Feininger’s
Painting Pale Fire

Pale Fire

Pale Fire—for Vladimir Nabokov
__________________

How easily I got diverted then—
By Nabokov’s Jack-in-the-Box puzzle
How many emails did I get to send
The NYTimes Book Discussion tussle.
A strange poem inside a weird novel
A Zembla commentary so tres gay
So full of lies you needed a shovel
An exiled old queen so fickle & fey.
After Lolita caused such a big flap
Keeping church & critics busy all day
Mary McCarthy more charmed this new way:
Preface, poem, notes, index so seductive.
After that I was addicted I suppose
To the rest of his Novels more or less…

Faber and Faber

Faber and Faber
__________________

“I drown in the
drumming ploughland
—Ted Hughes
“The Hawk in the Rain”
The Hawk in the Rain

Grizzled lizardy wrinkled—
Auden bending down over his drink
There in the Faber & Faber
Stairwell toasting Miss Eliot

What am I doing here—
Mincing words with these
Queer Queenly Old Poets so
Wasted by The Waste Land?
_________________________

Gesticulating weak wrists—
Old male whores in the Attic
Prissy Prostitutes cruising
Like hard-up Concubines?

“Lechery I simply despise”—
I told Sylvia, “But getting my
Book published by Faber, well,
I’ll do anything, baby.”
____________________

Sylvia got jealous as usual—
The Faber Queens putting the
Make on me, her Yorkshire
Gigolo poet husband

Valerie felt me up—
The swank party in Eliot’s flat
Blathering away about how
Prufrock couldn’t get it up

Cambridge

“swallowing of
the earth’s mouth”
—Ted Hughes
“The Hawk in the Rain”
The Hawk in the Rain

Drowning in the dreary remains—
All the graves of long-dead Poets
I waited for the weightless Dead
Their stubborn closets to disgorge

A definite downer at Cambridge—
Down to the bone-dazed Earth’s
Masturbating English Departments
Where diamond dice were thrown
____________________________

Sylvia grabbed me, wanted me—
Hurled herself down in my arms
Typing me into the Mytholmroyd
Monster, the jaded Beast I became

In her desperation to have me—
Incestuously like Big Bad Daddy
She resorted to Black Cat Magic
I became the Jaguar eating her up

Nightingales

“Apeneck Sweeny
spreads his knees”
—T. S. Eliot
“Sweeny Among the
Nightingales”

Apeneck Auden spreads—
His cheeks down on his knees
His tight puckered asshole
Only to ready to please

The young sailor in the park—
Slides it sideways then up
Deep into the River Platte
Thru the Poet’s horny gate
____________________

Miss Auden isn’t ready—
Her xylophone vertebrae
Doing the Rumba down to Rio
But finally something splits

The Wisteria weeps—
The sacred fissure bleeds
The surgeon has to sew and
Stitch the gnash back up

Love Song

“In the room
the women come
and go talking of
Michelangelo”
—T. S. Eliot
“The Love Song of
J. Alfred Prufrock”

Let us go then, prowling—
When the evening slinks
About, the tricks etherized
On half-deserted streets

The muttering queens—
Restless one-night stands
In cheap motels sucking
Oysters and faux-pearls
_______________________

The faggy fog rubs—
The back of your neck
Licking its tongue and
Lingering in your loins

Knowing you should—
Be curled up in bed
With your wife back
Home safe and sound
______________________

But there isn’t time—
For a hundred indecisions
The days are murdered
By lies and deceits

Not time to come and go—
Swishing like Michelangelo
Beneath the Sistine Chapel
Scaffolding high above
___________________

No time to turn back—
To peel a peach-fuzz angel
To measure out one’s life
With coy coffee spoons

Far be it for me—
To presume catty
Badboy butt-ends for
My days to come
_________________

Down the nightly—
Narrow streets ending up
Ragged crab claws scuttling
Across bathroom floors

I’ve wept and feasted—
Prayed and preyed until
I was old and bald-headed
Mealy-mouthed & toothless
__________________________

Was it really worth it—
All that marmalade & tea
Squeezing young unicorns dry
Doing those centaurs on the sly?

Hoping against coming back—
Like Lazarus from the Dead
Only for another dreary
Rerun of the same old thing?

Mytholmroyd Male

Mytholmroyd Male
__________________

“darkness beneath
night’s darkness”
—Ted Hughes
“Pike,” Lupercal

The old stone Temple—
The monolithic tombstone
Standing straight & tall
Moody manly erect

Shape-shifting Stonehenge—
Cemetery of the Dead
Thousands of years old
Encrusted with Kinsmen
_______________

Ugly phallic shaft—
In today’s cold drizzle rain
The last flickering light
Across the sullen moors

He leans against it—
Burning young Yorkshire
Youth with burning crotch
Turning into an ash-heap
______________

Sylvia gets him off—
Her lips buried in his
Dark black moody pubes
Deep down her throat

Ouija Board Story

Ouija Board Story

—for Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath
Daniel Huws, Richard Hollis,
Colin Wilcockson, Carol Hughes
___________________

“a parasitical orgy”
—Daniel Huws,
“Conversation with Hughes'
Contemporaries,” Ted Hughes
Conference, Pembroke College,
Cambridge University

“Daniel Huws has recently
owned up to being PAN
on the occasion recounted”
—Terry Gifford, “Hughes’s
Social Ecology,” The Cambridge
Companion To Ted Hughes
__________________________________

A parasitical orgy—
A good way to begin a
Séance of Admirers

Huddled around an—
Antique Ouija board
Here deep in midnight
___________

“Are you there?”—
asks Miss Auden and
ghostly W. B. Yeats

“Yes, we’re here—
and more than willing
to commune,” we say
____________

All of us hushed—
One could hear a pin drop
The séance begins…

Daniel Huws moves—
The Planchette around
The Board, warming it up
_______________

“I’m certainly ready—
for an orgy of words,
my dear,” Auden says

“I’m more than ready—
to slouch to Bethlehem,”
Yeats jokes laughingly
______________

Suddenly the Planchette—
Starts scribbling across
The Ouija Board frantically

And Ted Hughes’ voice—
Drifts into the room from
A faraway place somewhere
______________

“Brian O’Lynn to his house had no door,
He’d the sky for a ceiling, the earth for a floor,
He’d a way to jump out and a way to jump in,
“Tis a fine habitation”, says Brian O’Lynn.
_____________________

Brian O’Lynn went a courting one night,
But he set both mother and daughter to fight,
To fight for his hand they both stripped to the skin,
“Ach I’ll marry ye both,” says Brian O’Lynn.
_________________________

Brian O'Lynn and his wife and wife's mother,
They all went over the bridge together,
The bridge broke down and they all tumbled in,
“Ach I’ll go home by water,” says Brian O'Lynn.
_________________

Oh Brian O'Lynn was an Orangeman born,
But he married a Papist from this side of Mourne,
“Ach I will wear Orange and she will wear Green,
And we’ll keep out of trouble,” says Brian O’Lynn.
______________________

Brian O’Lynn went to Chapel one day,
But he had no beads so he’d damn all to say,
The priest comes up to him, says, “What is your Sin?”
“Ach I have no apparatus,” says Brian O’Lynn.
__________________

Suddenly Olwyn storms in—
Demanding the Séance cease
And Desist Immediately or else!!!

Olwyn screeches that the—
Estate forbids any type
Of Occult Communication!!!
_________

“We own Everything!!!—
Including all Communiqués
With the Living Dead!!!”

“The Hughes Estate—
Possess Copyrights on
All Ouija Board Discussions!”
_________________

The Planchette pauses—
Then the next message
Is quite to the point:

“Mind your own business—
Fuck off, you Old Witch!!!”
This is Sylvia speaking!!!”
_________________

The audience gasps—
Not since “Birthday Letters”
Have people been so shocked!

The smell of gas oozes—
Into the Parlor and then
The sound of Ariel hoofs!
______________

The Planchette came—
Back to life, it was the
Voice of Ted Hughes:

“Poetry isn’t just for—
England and other people’s
Poetry is also ours”
____________________

The Planchette seemed—
To be running out of psychic
Energy, slowly last words:

“Your past is really—
Valueless except for the
Stories, and so the stories…”