"At Melville's Tomb" by Hart Crane (poetry reading)

The editor of Poetry, Harriet Monroe, received this poem in 1926 and first rejected it, asking:

"How dice can bequeath an embassy (or anything else); and how a calyx (of death's bounty or anything else) can give back a scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph; and how, if it does, such a portent can be wound in corridors (of shells or anything else)."

Hart Crane gave a remarkably good answer, which she printed, citing other poems which make no literal sense and arguing that poetry has "another logic". You can read all about it here in The New York Observer:
http://www.observer.com/node/39822

The portrait of Hart Crane was painted in 1931 by David Alfaro Siqueiros.

The picture is of Herman Melville's tomb which is unremarkable. I don't know if Hart Crane actually wrote the poem there.

The last line should be Hart Crane's epitaph."This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps." He drowned in the Gulf of Mexico at he age of 33

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Melville's
• Tomb
• Hart
• Crane

[RonricoPuertoRico]

Brilliant.

[davek711]

I love your readings of Crane. Beautiful! Too bad there's nothing of the poet himself reading.

[souljaEXVOTO]

you can't know how much i needed that poem, and just now.

i think i still love you. ~with a kiss... *