29 Quotes by Hart Crane

O Thou steeled Cognizance whose leap commitsThe agile precincts of the lark’s return;Within whose lariat sweep encinctured singIn single chrysalis the many twain —Of stars Thou art the stitch and stallion glowAnd like an organ, Thou, with sound of doom —Sight, sound and flesh Thou leadest from time’s realmAs love strikes clear direction for the helm

I can remember much forgetfulness.

And I have been able to give freedom and life which was acknowledged in the ecstasy of walking hand in hand across the most beautiful bridge of the world, the cables enclosing us and pulling us upward in such a dance as I have never walked and never can walk with another.

The fact that The Bridge contains folk lore and other material suitable to the epic form need not therefore prove its failure as a long lyric poem, with interrelated sections.

It has taken a great deal of energy, which has not been so difficult to summon as the necessary patience to wait, simply wait much of the time - until my instincts assured me that I had assembled my materials in proper order for a final welding into their natural form.

The form of my poem rises out of a past that so overwhelms the present with its worth and vision that I'm at a loss to explain my delusion that there exist any real links between that past and a future worthy of it.

I think the sea has thrown itself upon me and been answered, at least in part, and I believe I am a little changed - not essentially, but changed and transubstantiated as anyone is who has asked a question and been answered.

I got so I simply gagged everytime I sat before my desk to write an ad.

Your primary presumption that The Bridge was proffered as an epic has no substantial foundation. You know quite well that I doubt that our present stage of cultural development is so ordered yet as to provide the means or method for such an organic manifestation as that.