Poetry corner: Stephen Crane edition

[ See here for the first amble around the poetry corner. ]

I've always liked Stephen Crane's poetry (available online here and here).  Crane had a singular style; his poems are terse to the point of abruptness, and they're filled with hard edges, stark imagery, and heavy (-handed?) symbolism.  You could reasonably argue that they're not poems at all.  They work for me, though I can easily imagine that they might not be everyone's cup of tea.

Crane's most famous poem--deservedly so--is "War is kind" (I say by way of reference, since he didn't generally title his poems), and if you haven't read it you definitely should.  But here are a few of my favorites of his that you're unlikely to have seen unless you've made an effort to find them.

Writing about the DOTIGOTUS put me in mind of this poem, albeit indirectly:

The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,
"I see that none has passed here
In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other roads."

And then there's this one:

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.  

"It is futile," I said,
"You can never--"

"You lie," he cried,
And ran on. 

And:

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter--bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart." 

And:

Yes, I have a thousand tongues,
And nine and ninety-nine lie.
Though I strive to use the one,
It will make no melody at my will,
But is dead in my mouth. 

And:

"Have you ever made a just man?"
"Oh, I have made three," answered God,
"But two of them are dead,
And the third--
Listen! Listen!
And you will hear the third of his defeat."

And finally:

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

Take that, humanity.

Comments

[Duncan]

I've always liked Crane's poetry too. All but two of these are familiar to me -- the dialogue with God and the 999 lying tongues. The others were in the various standard anthologies I read in the 60s, which were my introduction to "modern" poetry.

[Guest]

Third of his = thud of his

[John Caruso]

Yes, I saw the "thud" in the web version I referenced. My copy of Complete Poems of Stephen Crane has "third", though, so that's how I transcribed it. It might just be because of familiarity, but that's how I like it; "thud" sounds too literal to me.

[Save the Oocytes]

I didn't understand how to parse "third of his defeat."

[John Caruso]

I always took it to be a stylized rendering of "And you will hear the third [speak] of his defeat" (or "And you will hear [from] the third of his defeat"). I honestly don't know which one Crane actually wrote, though "thud" is starting to seem more likely. Could I really have been misled by a typo all these years? Damn you, Joseph Katz!

[Duncan]

The Library of America edition of Crane has "thud." In the note on the texts at the end of the volume, no variants (even as typos) are listed. It looks like "thud" is probably correct, especially since I agree it's hard to get "third of his defeat" to parse. Even if Crane wrote "third", some other word seems to be missing.

Thanks for the link to the Amazon listing of the Complete Poems, though. I loved the one-star review it got in 1999: "... very dull. The poems were not inspiring."

[John Caruso]

Cavil me all you want, but I have a hand-signed proof from Stephen Crane himself that I think settles the matter.

[Save the Oocytes]

I am impressed at your speed in obtaining this proof. It surprises me, though, because Crane seems to use plain, unadorned language in the rest of the poems lines quoted above. But I will cavil no more.