Adagios of islands, O my Prodigal,I don't think I could ever look at the word adagio again without turning red.
Complete the dark confessions her veins spell.
~ Hart Crane, Voyages II
There are two methods of approaching poetry. One breaks it down to meter, metaphor, symbol and every literary device in between. The other method is Bloom's, so inspired that it is hard to fully understand.
He speaks of recognition and allusions, and of poetic voice, a nebulous but unmistakable tone in every poem. He believes in the superiority of the sense of inevitability — unavoidable phrasing as opposed to the invariable. For example, Edgar Allan Poe's "In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore" is invariable; Walt Whitman's "If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles" in what Bloom calls "unavoidable phrasing", the best kind.
And he speaks of strangeness. Consciousness is to poetry what marble is to sculpture, and the best poems generate a felt change in consciousness.
How cheem.
2 comments:
"Strangeness" is the operative term. I guess I'm just a philistine, but having read the entire text of "Voyages II," it reminds me of a refrigerator magnet poem where random words – and the more obscure, the better – are thrown together.
"Undinal belly"? Give me a break.
You've read the entire text of Voyages II? Whoa..
I don't know the meaning of half of the words he uses, and I agree with you, "undinal belly" is pushing it! Bloom has much respect for Hart's poetry though. I don't know how much of it is because it is so tragic. There is a line in there that seems prophetic of his eventual drowning in the Caribbean.
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