The Crane thing, I know, seems a trifle obsessive or recherche. In the panoptic view, hey, look at all them poets! But I don't have a panoptical. "My Hart" is a part of my own program.

It began, it seems, with that chance find of Mandelstam in the bookstore back in '77 or so (David McDuff translation). Leibnizian monad of verbal image, detaching itself... (see OM's "Conv. About Dante" - where he talks about images in terms of aeronautics - images flying off from other images).

Strongly ecphrastic imagination. Verbal icon. The compact elegant phrase - like those Ecuadoran birds that sing with their wings. Nucleus of poems. "The Bridge" as exponential expansion of this process - the free-floating resonant image. Atlantis - hold thy floating singer late!

This image-making power in conjunction with epic scope & national ambition. How it cross-cuts the other & contemporary long poem projects. This I find fascinating. This I've built on in my Crane-Mandelstam US-RUS amalgam (Forth of July).