Daring voices in Stephen Crane's lines

Stripped bare of poetic ornaments, these skeltons of poetry require the reader to listen to  pungent dialogues and bitter soliloquies questioning the order of the universe, and to hark to reticence and silences of the quaintness of Stephen Crane's  cleverly rebellious lines. Pessimistic intellectual profanity worms its way through felicitous and biting satire (or vice versa?)... 

 

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."

***

There was a man with tongue of wood

Who essayed to sing, 

And in truth it was lamentable.

But there was one who heard 

The clip-clapper of this tongue of wood

And knew what the man

Wished to sing,

And with that the singer was content.

***

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."

***

When the prophet, a complacent fat

man,

Arrived at the mountain-top,

He cried: "Woe to my knowledge!

I intended to see good white lands

And bad black lands,

But the scene is grey."

***

"A man said to the universe:

"Sir, I exist!"

"However," replied the universe, 

"The fact has not created in me

"A sense of obligation."

***

I heard thee laugh,

And in this merriment 

I defined the measure of my pain;

I knew that I was alone,

Alone with love,

Poor shivering love,

And he, little sprite, 

Came to watch with me,

And at midnight,

We were like two creatures by a dead

camp-

fire.

 

***

Robert Browning's Dramatic Monologue

On the ground of its unique narrative qualities, the form of poetry that has recently appealed to me most is a form called dramatic monologue. It was invented and practiced principally by Robert Browning, and it is fundamentally characterized by having an explicit - often unreliable - speaker and an implied auditor. Glenn Everett describes Browninesque dramatic monologue as having the following three basic characteristics: (1) the reader acting as a silent listener, (2) the speaker's argumentative tone, (3) the completing of the dramatic scene by the actual reader from within, by means of using conjecture and imagination [adapted from Glenn Everett, "'You'll Not Let Me Speak': Engagement and Detachment in Browning's Monologues". Victorian Literature and Culture 19 ( 1991): 123-142]. One of the best examples of an unreliable narrator in Browning's poetry features in a poem entitled Porphyria's Lover. (For a case study of the ambiguities in dramatic monologues, see "Porphyria's Lover" by George P. Landow.)

Porphyria's Lover

The rain set early in tonight,

The sullen wind was soon awake,

It tore the elm-tops down for spite,

And did its worst to vex the lake:

I listened with heart fit to break.

When glided in Porphyria; straight

She shut the cold out and the storm,

And kneeled and made the cheerless grate

Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;

Which done, she rose, and from her form

Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,

And laid her soiled gloves by, untied

Her hat and let the damp hair fall,

And, last, she sat down by my side

And called me. When no voice replied,

She put my arm about her waist,

And made her smooth white shoulder bare,

And all her yellow hair displaced,

And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,

And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,

Murmuring how she loved me — she

Too weak, for all her heart's endeavor,

To set its struggling passion free

From pride, and vainer ties dissever,

And give herself to me forever.

But passion sometimes would prevail,

Nor could tonight's gay feast restrain

A sudden thought of one so pale

For love of her, and all in vain:

So, she was come through wind and rain.

Be sure I looked up at her eyes

Happy and proud; at last l knew

Porphyria worshiped me: surprise

Made my heart swell, and still it grew

While I debated what to do.

That moment she was mine, mine, fair,

Perfectly pure and good: I found

A thing to do, and all her hair

In one long yellow string l wound

Three times her little throat around,

And strangled her. No pain felt she;

I am quite sure she felt no pain.

As a shut bud that holds a bee,

I warily oped her lids: again

Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.

And l untightened next the tress

About her neck; her cheek once more

Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:

I propped her head up as before,

Only, this time my shoulder bore

Her head, which droops upon it still:

The smiling rosy little head,

So glad it has its utmost will,

That all it scorned at once is fled,

And I, its love, am gained instead!

Porphyria's love: she guessed not how

Her darling one wish would be heard.

And thus we sit together now,

And all night long we have not stirred,

And yet God has not said a word!