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Each weekday in April, Poetry Daily brings its email newsletter readers a special poem, selected by a contemporary poet whose work has appeard on Poetry Daily, as part of its annual fund-raising campaign and in celebration of National Poetry Month. This year, Poetry Daily is presenting these poems and comments to its website readers.

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Editors

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Jynne Dilling Martin's Poetry Month Pick, April 6, 2009

Four Selections from The Black Riders
by Stephen Crane   (1871-1900)

III
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.”

XXIV
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.

XXXI
Many workmen
Built a huge ball of masonry
Upon a mountain-top.
Then they went to the valley below,
And turned to behold their work.
“It is grand,” they said;
They loved the thing.
Of a sudden, it moved:
It came upon them swiftly;
It crushed them all to blood.
But some had opportunity to squeal.

XLII
I walked in a desert.
And I cried,
“Ah, God, take me from this place!”
A voice said, “It is no desert.”
I cried, “Well, but –
The sand, the heat, the vacant horizon.”
A voice said, “It is no desert.”

 

Jynne Dilling Martin Comments:
Lines from last month’s Poetry magazine? Newly translated Borges fragments? Excerpts from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridien? A poetic response to the Iraq war? All plausible possibilities; but astonishingly these terse, ironic, nihilistic gems were published in 1895, an era when poetry was overrun by facile versifiers (“I am the laughter of the new-born child / Upon whose sleep the heavenly angels smiled” mewed the preeminent poet of the day, the since-forgotten Richard Watson Gelder), a time when among American poets of note only Dickinson and Whitman had nervily abandoned all received poetic forms and meters, a year when a six-year-old T.S. Eliot had not yet given a thought to April’s cruelty, and a full two decades prior to Ezra Pound and H.D.’s lunchdate where they founded Imagism and cast poetry over the cliff into the modern world.

These radically modern excerpts are taken from The Black Riders, a book-length poem by Stephen Crane, who abhorred the stuffy verse of his day. Crane preferred his own work to be called “lines” rather than “poems,” protesting to a friend that “the word ‘poet’ continually reminds me of long-hair and seems to me a most detestable form of insult.” Perhaps his insistence on not being called a poet contributed to his current neglect in the poetic canon; perhaps his larger body of fiction (Red Badge of Courage, Maggie, etcetera) outweighed this slender volume; perhaps, even, Stephen Crane became eclipsed by his more-famous surname holder, American poetry titan Hart (no relation).

Whatever the reason, despite not being known as a poet, the entirety of Crane’s Black Riders is as startling and black-humored as the excerpts above, and worth reading in full. A review in The Nation called Crane “a condensed Whitman or an amplified Dickinson,” and while he may share Whitman’s penchant for conversation and Dickinson’s talent for concision and image, Crane’s originality lies in his unorthodox voice and nihilistic sensibility. Walt and Emily dwelled in belief systems of their own making, finding comfort and hope in the thought of their soul’s immortality. Crane, though, expresses the cynicism of a century he never lived to experience, when tuberculosis took his life in 1900 at a mere 28 years of age. To Crane, death is the inevitable, isolating end to a life lived in futile struggle against nature’s indifferent and overpowering forces. No special self is sung of here.

This sounds bleak, but I love how Crane honors man’s dignity even in the face of this stark knowledge: “I like it because it is bitter, and because it is my heart.” These poems are Biblical parables for a secular age: instructions for how to press through what we sometimes might feel is a lonely, barren desert of a life with clear eyes, dignity and a sense of humor.

About Jynne Dilling Martin:
Jynne Dilling Martin’s poetry has appeared widely including in the Kenyon Review, Boston Review, New England Review, TriQuarterly, Indiana Review, New Orleans Review, Southern Review, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the 2008 Ruth Lilly Prize and was awarded a 2008 fellowship to Yaddo. She also won this year’s Boston Review/92nd Street Y Discovery Prize. She works at Random House and lives in a fortress in Brooklyn.

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