Guest Blogger

Those who have been reading this blog for awhile will remember Diane McCormick’s many contributions to this site. Though she has been taking time off to work on other writing, she has graciously consented to again contribute to this site.

She provides a much-needed second opinion on poets who deserve much more commentary and perspective than I can provide. As a former teacher, I, more than most, probably appreciate multiple perspectives on a work. Interpretating poetry is an art, not a science, and multiple perspectives, whether through multiple writers or reader commentary, offers the best way to look at any poem.

Hart Crane’s “Black Tambourine”

Hart Crane, 1899-1932, is said to be a poet whose efforts were to “distill an image of America beyond space and time.”

Crane was born in 1899 in Garretsville, Ohio. Described as a “highly anxious and volatile child” he never finished high school, preferring to stay home, reading Shakespeare, Marlowe and Donne. His parents separated when he was nine years old, reconciled and finally divorced in 1917. His father, a candy manufacturer, never approved of his son’s writing; his mother who was often unstable, could not maintain any kind of normal relationship with her son and eventually they were estranged.

After his parents’ divorce, Crane moved to New York with no high school diploma, had love affairs with men, and lived the life of an impassioned if unsuccessful poet, moving back to his mother in Ohio when his money ran out. Alcoholism and instability prevented him from finding much support from family or friends.

At the age of 33, Crane made an attempt to change his sexual orientation and had a love affair with a woman in Mexico. One night as he sailed home with her, he said goodbye, climbed to the deck of the ship and jumped overboard. After his suicide, his mother sought fame for her son as she scrubbed floors for a living.

The influences of T.S. Eliot and Walt Whitman, whom he admired, are apparent. His poetry is complex, layered with meaning, ideas doubling back on themselves. I find the best way to enjoy Crane is to concentrate on his language and never mind attempting to understand his every word–something of a bother for compulsives. Even though not all parts of the poems are clear, one has to admire the intelligence and regret the suffering that produced them.

Here is an example of Crane’s work:

Black Tambourine

The interests of a black man in a cellar
Mark tardy judgment on the world’s closed door.
Gnats toss in the shadow of a bottle,
And a roach spans a crevice in the floor.

Aesop, driven to pondering, found
Heaven with the tortoise and the hare,
Fox brush and sow ear top his grave
And mingling incantations on the air.

The black man, forlorn in the cellar,
Wanders in some mid-kingdom, dark, that lies,
Between his tambourine, stuck on the wall,
And, in Africa, a carcass quick with flies.

The “interests” of a black man are the interests of any human being: to live, to love, to find joy, but this representative of a race notes late judgment from a foreign culture that has closed its door to his desire to be recognized as an equal. In the minds of his white brothers his lot is caste either in the cellar with its gnats, circling in the shadows of old bottles above the roaches jumping cracks in the cement floor or the owner of a drum that jangles out a noisy rhythm.

Aesop, the Greek slave who wrote of animal fables, found heaven in the animal kingdom.
The black man, forlorn in his lowly dark place wanders “mid-kingdom” between Aesop’s animals and his tambourine stuck on the wall, an equally damaging stereotype of the happy Negro.

A Negro with whom Crane worked in the basement storeroom of his father’s restaurant in Cleveland in the 1920s was the inspiration for this poem. To Crane, the man seemed placed in the mid-kingdom between beast and man. Aesop personified cute animals in his stories, white folk romanticized the Negro as a singing, strutting banjo playing, tambourine banging simpleton. This black man lives in the dark mid-kingdom, neither an animal nor a stereotype which sounds like a good thing and yet…

The images freshen our understanding: gnats in the shadow of a bottle, roaches spanning a crevice in the floor, a tambourine stuck on a wall, a carcass quick with flies.

Could this poem apply to every foreigner we hear Rather, Jennings, and Brokaw spotlight each evening? to ourselves? Are we are all mid-kingdom, neither an animal nor a romantic stereotype but something in-between?

Diane McCormick

The Picture of Calm

I’ve spent the last two days entertaining and being entertained by my grandchildren and their families. This is the first time we’ve gotten together since they had chidlren so, despite the sudden 100+ degree weather we’ve been suffering through I’ve been enjoying myself too much the last few days to do much with my blog.

My one request, an easy one to fulfill I thought, was a picture of me and the two kids together. We took far too many pictures but most of them turned out like this:

Apparently someone didn’t think it was nearly as fun having his picture taken as grandpa did.

None of the pictures turned out as a masterpiece, though my favorite is the one below. Those wrinkled brows probably show the stress of trying a little too hard to produce a "perfect" picture. At least one of us seemed capable of producing something that might pass as a smile.

Thank goodness I never tried to make a living taking family portraits. I think I’ll stick to my scenics.

To Link or Not to Link

Things could get real crazy around here for awhile. As noted earlier, I’m in the middle of selling my home and moving to Tacoma. Part of that process includes freshening up this place, replacing the carpets, getting the shower replaced, dealing with insurance agents, contractors, etc. Obviously moving all the furniture out for carpeting and painting is going to mean some enforced blackouts.

I’ve also promised to babysit my grandson Gavin for a week shortly and I’m certainly not going to pass that up just because I’m getting ready to move. Carpe diem.

In addition, I’m probably going to have to go up to Tacoma to start looking for a new house rather than merely searching online. And obviously when I sell my house there is going to a real, not virtual, disconnect until I can get an cable connection.

Though I had thought about starting my own political commentary, I’m joining a new political blog started by ReachM High Cowboy Networkinstead. Obviously that will put more demands on my time, but I still find it difficult to express liberal ideas here and not do anything in the “real” world to support those ideas. At least when I was a teacher I could argue that educating good citizens was my contribution.

I’m still trying to decide if I should link to all the writers who will be contributing to that site just as I now link to the Wayward Co-op members. I must admit, though, that I think of myself as a literary blog, and I’m not sure that I want to suddenly link to huge numbers of “political blogs.” If so, should I set them aside as political links, my first thought. If so, do I move those who are in my other links section who are political over to political links? Should I just remain a literary blog and omit these political links entirely. Should I move all my links to a separate page and just put out something called “Links?”

Strangely enough, this is one of the few issues I’ve dealt with on my blog where I would appreciate other bloggers’ advice.