Hart Crane Pantoum No. 1
by Bill Yarrow
O Gorham, I have known moments in eternity.
My satisfactions are far more remote and dangerous than yours.
Life is too scattered for me to savor it any more.
Your figure haunts me like a kind of affectionate caress.
My satisfactions are far more remote and dangerous than yours.
O God that I should have to live within these American restrictions.
Your figure haunts me like a kind of affectionate caress.
Meditation on the sun is all there is.
O God that I should have to live within these American restrictions.
The imagination is the only thing worth a damn.
Meditation on the sun is all there is.
Let us invent an idiom for the proper transposition of jazz into words!
The imagination is the only thing worth a damn.
I pass my goggle-eyed father on the streets.
Let us invent an idiom for the proper transposition of jazz into words!
My writing is hard deciphering.
I pass my goggle-eyed father on the streets.
That funeral was one of the few beautiful things that have happened to me in Cleveland.
My writing is hard deciphering.
O if you knew how much I am learning!
That funeral was one of the few beautiful things that have happened to me in Cleveland.
One must be drenched in words.
O if you knew how much I am learning!
Let's write occasionally and be as metropolitan as possible.
One must be drenched in words.
Life is too scattered for me to savor it any more.
Let's write occasionally and be as metropolitan as possible.
O Gorham, I have known moments in eternity.
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Author's Note
A pantoum made from lines from The Letters of Hart Crane 1916-1932, edited by Brom Weber, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1965. Out of copyright. Internet Archive.
This poem was published in RHINO 2015.
It appears in Blasphemer (Lit Fest Press 2015).
Other stories by Bill Yarrow
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Good idea. There's a kind of Whitmanesque quality to it.
Yes to the pantoum format. One of my favorite forms. And yes to the cento approach. And absolutely yes to Hart Crane. Good poem, Bill.
Had to look up "pantoum" twice (before and after) and Gorham, altho Cleveland looked familiar), and now am ready to comment on the poem's effect on me. I like the rolling repetition, the ideas and visuals, and, ultimately, this: "The imagination is the only thing worth a damn." Yea, verily. *
Very fine.
Relentless caper for all those who step the legend of their youth into the noon. Hart Crane
Like Mathew, I had to look up pantoum. The form has a nice cohesion due to the repetitions. I like the sound and movement of this, Bill. *
Thank you, SDR, Sam, Mat, Gary, and Daniel!
"Life is too scattered for me to savor it any more."
Very pleasing to the eye and the ear.
I especially liked the line, "Your figure haunts me like a kind of affectionate caress"
*
Thanks, Darryl, Randal (welcome back, Randal!), and Amanda!
*I especially enjoy the surprise of the new lines after the first stanza. Each line you chose is masterful.
"Life is too scattered for me to savor it anymore" I like that line!
Thank you, Nonnie and Kitty!
Wow. My first pantoum. Love it.*
*, Bill.
"The imagination is the only thing worth a damn."
Thank you, Tim and David!
Stunning. Period.
Thanks, Philip!