Crane's Poetry

Once again I find poetry is not my area for enjoyable reading. I still find it hard to understand and find meaning in. It is amazing to me that a literary work of art could consist of as little as four lines. It reveals to me, though, that quantity is not as important as quality. This is a lesson I have to keep reminding myself of when accomplishing a task.

As I read the poetry, even though I wasn’t able to interpret most of it, I was able to pick up on a few ideas. I felt in the Black Riders poem he was speaking of the pirates coming from the sea. The “black” took my thoughts to the appearance of pirates and their lifestyle. The mention of sin led me to think of the unlawful ways of the pirates: robbery, murder, drunkenness, and taking young maidens as their “women” and how they introduced these into society. I felt he was illustrating how darkness and sin could exist and emerge from the dark depths of something as beautiful as the ocean.

Crane speaks of a god beating a man, a man pursuing an endless destination, a kind war, and a cold God. Many of these ideas seem to have come from his life. He seemed to be a very unsettled person, withdrawing from many schools and moving about quite often. His view of God could have come from the feelings he had of his parents’ view of their God. I did not sense any positive outlooks on life from his poetry. His desire to represent mankind living in a harsh or “hostile world” seems evident in his writings.

Again, I will be looking to some of your posts to try to better understand the meanings within the lines of Cranes’ poetic works.