... and as I wrote yesterday, this "Acmeist" trans-historical response has been what it's all about for me (see Alephoebooks). Another reason I was drawn to Hart Crane's The Bridge. He took a sort of Platonic-Dionysian concept from Nietzsche et al. (eternal return - of Atlantis). Thus the Island Road sonnets are a blend of Berryman, Berrigan, & Shakespeare. Thus Stubborn Grew is an amalgam of echoes from several American long poems (esp. The Bridge, but also Maximus & the Cantos), Mandelshtam's Voronezh quatrains, Finnegans Wake, Dante.


Jasper Johns, Hart Crane (Periscope)