MAN: It's a choir.
HART: "A land of leaning ice"
"Hugged by plaster-grey arches of sky"
"Flings itself silently Into eternity"
"Has no one come here to win you"
"Or left you with the faintest blush Upon your glittering breasts?"
"Have you no memories, O Darkly Bright?"
"Cold-hushed, there is only the shifting moments"
"That journey..."
"That journey toward no Spring"
"No birth, no death,"
"No time nor sun"
"In answer."
Harold!
HART: You know he is seeing other women in Cleveland.
MOTHER: Your father is nothing to me.
He is a tiny man with nothing but his chocolate and his numbers.
HART: Then why don't we bleed him for all he's worth?
If he is so heartless, then why shouldn't we be?
Dance with me, Harold.
I don't want to go back to Cleveland.
I want to stay here in New York.
Dance with me, Harold.
I don't want you to call me Harold anymore. Call me Hart.
"Hart"? Yeah.
That is my new name.
MOTHER: Okay, Hart.
HART: "And so it was I entered the broken world"
"To trace the visionary company of love..."
HART: Here it is.
Diffututa mentula.
"Fucked flat."
That's how I feel. My fuckin' father.
Why does he make you work here?
Punishment. He doesn't want a goddamned poet for a son.
He wants a calculator.
Then why don't you kill him?
I'm going to go to New York, go to Columbia University,
Learn French.
Well, I know French.
I love you.
I know.
HART: Sometimes I love you so much I cry.
Why?
Because you have the eyes of Pierrot.
Who's that?
Oh, just this guy from Italy.
Yes!
Isadora Duncan was incredible.
Magnificent.
But the crowd, what a bunch of conservative bores.
So after, she comes back, breast exposed.
She tells 'em all to go home and read the Calamus section from Whitman.
I'm sure most don't even know Whitman. It was... It was incredible,
Breast hanging out, nipple exposed,
Telling them that the truth isn't beautiful,
That in fact, it's quite indecent.
But the important thing, is how do we get that into poetry?
All of it. Jazz, Woolworth's, typewriters,
Buildings, freeways, everything.
It's... It's popping up from bridges and... And tunnels,
You know, from... From here to... To San Francisco.
How do we... How do we get that into poetry?
Eliot did it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
But Rabbi Crane,
Rabbi Crane will do it with a positive affirmation.
It's not enough to join a bunch of Apeneck Sweeneys saying life is shit.
We all know life is a dance of death, but you can still make something out of it.
You can do something with it.
Munsey, Munsey, Munsey.
There's something...
There's something beneath this...
This hell of our modernized, mechanized world.
There's something true,
Some essential
Antique beauty that we can get at,
We can get at using the very Elizabethans that Eliot, that master of death, utilized.
We can use Shakespeare, Johnson, Marlowe, Webster,
We can use them for a resurrection, for an affirmation.
Hart, forgive me for saying this, but you want to speak for America.
Yeah. Does it matter that you're queer?
Whitman was queer.
That's why he could love all of America.
The roustabouts, the slaves,
The... The... The soldiers he nursed in the Civil War.
So you will expose yourself?
That's funny, considering my truck driver left me.
No, people can know everything about us when we're dead,
But for now, it's better to keep quiet,
For Father's sake.
Right.
You wouldn't want to lose that tremendous job for the sake of some queer affirmation.
That job is killing me.
You know, I might be the last Romantic alive,
But if I don't...
If I don't get out of there, I'm not gonna be able to write anymore.
MAN: Fuck!
HART: You okay?
Does it hurt?
Stop the bleeding.
FATHER: Harold, come here.
HART: I'm eating.
You're living with your mother, go eat with her.
Why don't you eat with her, you pig?
I will not be spoken to like that in front of these people.
HART: What, in front of the workers? Your slaves? Is that what you mean?
You will apologize to me and to everyone here. Oh, yeah? Yeah?
That's what I am, right? One of your slaves? Huh?
Why don't you go to hell? Take your money and shove it up your ass!
HART: Hey. Munsey, wait. You all right?
MUNSON: Ugh.
You okay? You okay? You all right? Yeah.
I'm all right. You okay? Yeah, come on.
HART: Shh! Stop!
Shh! Go, go, go, go! Go.
Come on. Hurry. Go!
No more drinking in this house!
Fuck you! Fuck all of you!
I'm astounded by your picture. Apples and Gable?
Yeah. I'd... I'd love to write a... I'd be honored to write a... An essay about it,
In a comprehensive essay about your work.
Okay, Hart, fine, fine.
Really? Great. Uh, would you uh... Would you like to go to the the cinema with me?
Right now? Yeah.
I'm sorry, Hart. There is so much work to do.
Okay. Well... I'll see you soon then. Yes.
Okay. See ya.
Tough.
Don't hide from Naugahyde.
Naugahyde.
Just messing around.
Naugahyde, Naugahyde, Naugahyde.
Naugahyde. Tough.
Tough. Tough. Tough.
Naugahyde.
"What is that?"
Naugahyde.
I've got some Naugahyde for you.
I don't go anywhere without my Naugahyde.
HART: My Grandmother's Love Letters.
"There's..."
"There are no stars tonight But those of memory"
"Yet how much room for memory there is"
"In the loose girdle of soft rain."
"There is even room enough For the letters of my mother's mother"
"Elizabeth"
"That have been pressed so long Into a corner of the roof"
"That they are brown and soft And liable to melt as snow"
"Over the greatness of such space Steps must be gentle"
"It is all hung by an invisible white hair"
"It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air"
"And I ask myself"
"'Are your fingers long enough to play Old keys that are but echoes"
"'Is the silence strong enough To carry back the music to its source"
"'And back to you again As though to her?'"
"Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand"
"Through much of what she would not understand"
"And so I stumble."
"And the rain continues on the roof"
"With such a sound of gently pitying laughter."
The Marriage of Faustus and Helen.
"The mind has shown itself at times"
"Too much the baked and labeled dough"
"Divided by accepted multitudes."
"Across the stacked partitions of the day"
"Across the memoranda, baseball scores"
"The stenographic smiles and stock quotations"
"Smutty wings flash out equivocations"
"The mind is brushed by sparrow wings"
"Numbers, rebuffed by asphalt, crowd"
"The margins of the day, accent the curbs"
"Convoying divers dawns on every corner"
"To druggist, barber and tobacconist"
"Until the graduate opacities of evening"
"Take them away as suddenly to somewhere"
"Virginal perhaps, less fragmentary, cool"
"There is the world dimensional"
"For those untwisted by the love of things irreconcilable..."
"And yet, suppose some evening"
"I forgot The fare and transfer,"
"Yet got by that way Without recall"
"Lost yet poised in traffic"
"Then I might find your eyes across an aisle"
"Still flickering with those prefigurations"
"Prodigal, yet uncontested now"
"Half-riant before the jerky window frame"
"There is some way, I think, to touch Those hands of yours"
"That count the nights"
"Stippled with pink and green advertisements."
"And now, before its arteries turn dark"
"I would have you meet this bartered blood"
"Imminent in his dream, none better knows The white wafer cheek of love,"
"Or offers words Lightly as moonlight on the eaves meets snow."
"Reflective conversion of all things At your deep blush,"
"When ecstasies thread The limbs and belly,"
"When rainbows spread Impinging on the throat and sides..."
"Inevitable, the body of the world"
"Weeps in inventive dust for the hiatus That winks above it,"
"Bluet in your breasts."
"The earth may glide diaphanous to death"
"But if I lift my arms it is to bend To you who turned away once,"
Helen,
"Knowing The press of troubled hands, too alternate"
"With steel and soil to hold you endlessly"
"I meet you, therefore, in that eventual flame"
"You found in final chains,"
"No captive then Beyond their million brittle, bloodshot eyes"
"White, through white cities passed"
"On to assume That world which comes to each of us alone."
"Accept a lone eye riveted to your plane"
"Bent axle of devotion along companion ways"
"That beat, continuous, to hourless days"
"One inconspicuous,"
"Glowing orb of praise."
Two.
"Brazen hypnotics glitter here"
"Glee shifts from foot to foot, Magnetic to their tremulo."
"This crashing opera bouffe Blest excursion!"
"This ricochet From roof to roof."
"Know, Olympians, we are breathless"
"While nigger cupids scour the stars!"
"A thousand light shrugs balance us"
"Through snarling hails of melody."
"White shadows slip across the floor"
"Splayed like cards from a loose hand"
"Rhythmic ellipses leap into canters"
"Until somewhere a rooster banters."
"Greet naively, yet intrepidly New soothings, new amazements"
"That cornets introduce at every turn"
"And you may fall downstairs with me"
"With perfect grace and equanimity"
"Or, plaintively scud past shores"
"Where, by strange harmonic laws"
"All relatives, serene and cool"
"Sit rocked in patent armchairs."
"O, I have known metallic paradises"
"Where cuckoos clucked to finches"
"Above the deft catastrophes of drums"
"While titters hailed the groans of death"
"Beneath gyrating awnings I have seen"
"The incunabula of the divine grotesque."
"This music has a reassuring way."
"The siren of the springs of guilty song"
"Let us take her on the incandescent wax"
"Striated with nuances, nervosities"
"That we are heir to she is still so young"
"We cannot frown upon her as she smiles"
"Dipping here in this cultivated storm"
"Among slim skaters of the gardened skies."
Three.
"Capped arbiter of beauty in this street"
"That narrows darkly into motor dawn"
"You, here beside me, delicate ambassador"
"Of intricate slain numbers that arise"
"In whispers, naked of steel"
"Religious gunman!"
"Who faithfully, yourself, will fall too soon"
"And in other ways than as the wind settles"
"On the sixteen thrifty bridges of the city"
"Let us unbind our throats of fear and pity."
"We even, Who drove speediest destruction"
"In corymbulous formations of mechanics,"
"Who hurried the hill breezes, spouting malice"
"Plangent over meadows, and looked down"
"On rifts of torn and empty houses"
"Like old women with teeth unjubilant"
"That waited faintly, briefly and in vain"
"We know, eternal gunman, our flesh remembers"
"The tensile boughs, the nimble blue plateaus,"
"The mounted, yielding cities of the air!"
"That saddled sky that shook down vertical Repeated play of fire"
"No hypogeum Of wave or rock was good against that hour"
"We did not ask for that, but have survived"
"And will persist to speak again before"
"All stubble streets that have not curved"
"To memory, or known the ominous lifted arm"
"That lowers down the arc of Helen's brow"
"To saturate with blessing and dismay."
"A goose, tobacco and cologne"
"Three winged and gold-shod prophecies of heaven,"
"The lavish heart shall always have to leaven"
"And spread with bells and voices, and atone"
The abating shadows of our conscript dust
"Anchises' navel, dripping of the sea"
"The hands Erasmus dipped in the gleaming tides"
"Gathered the voltage of blown blood and vine"
"Delve upward for the new and scattered wine"
"O brother-thief of time, that we recall"
"Laugh out the meager penance of their days"
"Who dare not share with us the breath released"
"The substance drilled and spent beyond repair"
"For golden, or the shadow of gold hair"
"Distinctly praise the years, whose volatile"
"Blamed bleeding hands extend and thresh"
"The imagination spans beyond despair"
"Outpacing bargain,"
"Vocable and prayer."
HART: "Dear Mr. Kahn",
"My first collected poems, White Buildings, are to be published next spring"
"With a forward by Eugene O'Neill."
"Although my poems have appeared from time to time in various magazines,"
"Such as The Dial and The Little Review,"
"I'm not yet well enough known to reap any substantial benefits"
"From what I've written."
"I'm 26 years of age, and for the last seven years,"
"Have been entirely dependent on my efforts"
"As an advertising copywriter for my living."
"What real writing I've done has had to be accomplished"
"After office hours and sometimes at the risk of losing my position."
"Last June, as a result of ill health and nervous exhaustion,"
"I had to resign my position at Sweets catalogue,"
"Regardless of my dependence on my salary there,"
"And live in the country until my health recovered."
"But as I find myself now completely without funds,"
"My circumstances seem to be rather acute."
"One of my friends has suggested"
"That you might be sufficiently interested in the creation"
"Of an indigenous American poetry to possibly assist me at this time."
"Besides the poems collected I White Buildings,"
"I have partially written a long poem,"
"The conception of which has been in my mind for some years."
"I've had to work at it very intermittently between night and morning,"
"And while shorter efforts can be more successfully completed under crippling circumstances,"
"A larger conception such as this poem, The Bridge,"
"Aiming as it does to enunciate a new cultural synthesis"
"Of values in terms of our America, requires a more steady application"
"And less interruption than my circumstances have yet granted me to give it."
"With $1,000, I could live in retirement and cheaply"
"In the country for at least a year's time and complete this poem."
"My references, Waldo Frank, Allen Tate, Gorham Munson,"
"Eugene O'Neill, James Light, Marion Moore, Jane Heap, and Paul Rosenfield."
HART: "My dear mother",
"For almost six weeks now, I've not heard from you or Grandma."
"I've put off writing you under these conditions,"
"There was enough reason to do so simply on the basis of your own indifference,"
"Or possibly disgust with me."
"I don't know where you may be at this time, but in case you may,"
"For any reason, wish to write me,"
"I'm writing to say that I shall probably, for the next year,"
"Be at the following address."
"Mrs. Addy Turner in Patterson, New York."
"I'm unusually well provided for, and shall leave for the country next Saturday."
"Yesterday afternoon, I had the pleasure of being rewarded in some measure"
"For some of the work I've been doing."
"After an interview with Otto Kahn at his home at 1100 Fifth Avenue,"
"I was given the sum of $2,000 to spend on my living expenses"
"During the next year,"
"Which time is to be opened and writing"
"In the most creative message I have to give,"
"Regardless of whether it is profitable in dollars or cents or not."
"I'm very tired now. With all the strain and effort of the last two months,"
"I shall probably pick up as never before"
"When I get into the quiet of the country"
"And have the first real opportunity in my life to use my talents unhampered by fear"
"And worry for the morrow."
Rich! RICH: What?
Get in here! Get in here!
Hey!
HART: "Dear Waldo",
"For many days now, I have gone about quite dumb with something"
"For which 'happiness' must be too mild a term."
"At any rate, my aptitude for communication, such as it ever is,"
"Has been limited to one person alone"
"And perhaps for the first time in my life,"
"And I can only think it is for the last,"
"So far is my imagination"
"From the conception of anything more profound and lovely than this love."
"I have wanted to write you more than once,"
"But it will take many letters to let you know what I mean,"
"For myself at least,"
"When I say that I have seen the Word made Flesh."
"I mean nothing less, and I know now that there is such a thing as indestructibility."
"In the deepest sense, where flesh became transformed"
"Through intensity of response to counterresponse,"
"Where sex was beaten out, where a purity of joy was reached that included tears."
HART: " How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest"
"The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him"
"Shedding white rings of tumult, building high"
"Over the chained bay waters Liberty"
"Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes"
"As apparitional as sails that cross"
"Some page of figures to be filed away"
"Till elevators drop us from our day..."
"I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights"
"With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene"
"Never disclosed, but hastened to again"
"Foretold to other eyes on the same screen"
"And Thee,"
"Across the harbor, silverpaced"
"As though the sun took step of thee, yet left"
"Some motion ever unspent in thy stride"
"Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!"
"Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft"
"A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets"
"Tilting there momentarily, shrill shirt ballooning"
"A jest falls from the speechless caravan"
"Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks"
"A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene"
"All afternoon the cloud flown derricks turn..."
"Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still"
"And obscure as that heaven of the Jews, Thy guerdon..."
"Accolade thou dost bestow Of anonymity time cannot raise"
"Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show"
"O harp and altar, of the fury fused,"
"How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!"
"Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge"
"Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry"
"Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift"
"Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,"
"Beading thy path condense eternity"
"And we have seen night lifted in thine arms."
There's nothing like this in the world.
Shh.
HART: " Under thy shadow by the piers I waited"
"Only in darkness is thy shadow clear"
"The City's fiery parcels all undone"
"Already snow submerges an iron year"
"O Sleepless as the river under thee"
"Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod"
"Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend"
"And of the curveship lend a myth to God."
Wellwood Toothpaste! Don't suffer from tooth decay!
It's all right! Everything's okay!
You're not gonna suffer!
You won't suffer from decay with Wellwood!
Everything's all right!
You got Wellwood Toothpaste!
And then, it's over!
"Under the shadow by the... By the pier..."
Allen? Allen, hey. It's Hart.
How are you?
Yeah, I know, I know it's late. It's, uh, um,
I'm, uh, I'm in the cabin.
Um, did... Did you get my... Did you get, um, the package I sent you?
Yeah, well, yeah, well, you could've told me.
I know, it's just, uh, it's just nice to hear, you know?
It would've been nice to hear...
Well, what'd you think? Uh-huh.
Mmm-hmm.
Look, look, look, I, uh, I have more. Here, let me, uh, let me read it to you.
No, uh, uh, just let me read you what I got.
Um, um, um...
"Under thy shadow by the piers I waited"
"Only in darkness is thy shadow clear"
"The City's fiery parcels all undone"
"Already snow submerges an iron year"
"O Sleepless..."
No, it's, uh, um, "To... To Brooklyn Bridge."
Mmm-hmm. Well, that's the end of it.
Mmm-hmm.
Yeah, uh, it's like a, you know, a prologue, I think.
You know, to the whole thing.
Mmm-hmm.
No, I know, uh, I know it's late, I just, you know, I just wanted to...
All right.
All right, I'll call you tomorrow. Okay, all right.
Waldo.
Hey.
It's Hart.
Harold,
There's no doubt you can write.
You've shown me that. But what good does it do you
If you can't make your own way?
I can't do anything else.
I can see that, Harold. But I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do about it.
I can't make you work with me.
Not if you make me a stock boy and put me at the bottom of the ladder.
Harold, I can't give you any position. You can't hold down a regular job.
You have proven that.
How am I supposed to write or find time to write
If I spend my... My soul's life trying to sell toothpaste?
Listen. Every man makes his way in the world,
And a man who can't isn't worth a damn.
Listen, Harold. Your grandmother's about to pass.
I know you've spent that inheritance a thousand times already in your mind
But I urge you to be prudent with that money.
HART: What are you reading?
MAN: I just saw this one and I thought it was nice.
Monsieur?
I don't have any money.
I left my... I left my wallet at the hotel
I can come back.
I'll come back and pay for the wine. Okay?
MAN: Ma'am, we can, we'll pay for it.
I'll go and get the money, okay?
I'll go to the hotel and...
Get off of me! WOMAN: Richard! What are you doing, Richard?
HART: Get off me! WOMAN: What are you doing?
MAN: Guys, guys... HART: Fucking...
WOMAN: Richard!
WOMAN: No! Fuck! Get the fuck off me!
MAN: Guys, guys... HART: Get off me!
WOMAN: Richard! HART: Get the fuck off me!
MAN: Guys, guys... HART: Get off me!
WOMAN: Richard! Step away. No!
It's all over.
What do you mean?
Hart, stop.
Hart, please! Stop!
What is it, Hart?
Hart!
No! Son of a bitch!
Don't you ever fucking do that again!
What?
I can't do it anymore.
HART: "Dear Lotte and Ricardo, I'm sailing to Mexico."
"Damn the gendarmes."
"Dear Lotte and Ricardo, I'm sailing to Mexico next Saturday."
"Damn the gendarmes."
"The change from going back to France was made"
"Without any trouble by the Guggenheim people."
"I'm happy at the change."
"Truly, for me, a pretty locality,"
"And everything and pregnant."
"First a week in Mexico City with my old and wonderful friend Katherine Anne Porter,"
"And possibly Peggy Cowley, Malcolm's ex,"
"And then on to some country location."
Hey!
HART: The Broken Tower.
"The bell-rope that gathers God at dawn"
"Dispatches me as though I dropped down the knell Of a spent day"
"To wander the cathedral lawn From pit to crucifix,"
"Feet chill on steps from hell."
KATHERINE: Hart.
Hart. Mmm?
Wake up.
Hart.
You can't get arrested again. They'll take away your fellowship.
I can't write anymore.
I'm washed up.
Hart. Come on. We'll put you to bed.
HART: "Have you not heard, have you not seen that corps..."
"Have you not heard, Have you not seen that corps Of shadows in the tower,"
"Whose shoulders sway Antiphonal carillons launched before"
"The stars are caught and hived in the sun's ray?"
"The bells, I say, the bells break down their tower"
"And swing I know not where."
"Their tongues engrave Membrane through marrow,"
"My longscattered score Of broken intervals..."
"And I, their sexton slave!"
"Oval encyclicals in canyons heaping"
"The impasse high with choir."
"Banked voices slain!"
"Pagodas, campaniles with reveilles"
"Out leaping O terraced echoes prostrate on the plain!"
"And so it was I entered the broken world"
"To trace the visionary company of love, its voice"
"An instant in the wind I know not whither hurled"
"And not for long to hold each desperate choice."
"My word I poured."
"But was it cognate, scored Of that tribunal monarch of the air"
"Whose thigh embronzes..."
"Whose thigh embronzes earth, strikes crystal Word"
"In wounds pledged once to hope cleft to despair?"
"The steep encroachments of my blood left me No answer"
"Could blood hold such a lofty tower As flings the question true?"
"Or is it she Whose sweet mortality stirs latent power?"
"And through whose pulse I hear, counting the strokes"
"My veins recall and add, rev..."
"And through whose pulse..."
"The steep encroachments of my blood left me No answer"
"Could blood hold such a lofty tower As flings the question true?"
"Or is it she Whose sweet mortality stirs latent power?"
"And through whose pulse I hear, counting the strokes"
"My veins recall and add, revived and sure"
"The angelus of wars my chest evokes"
"What I hold healed, original now, and pure..."
"And builds, within, a tower that is not stone"
"Not stone can jacket heaven"
"But slip Of pebbles, visible wings of silence sown"
"In azure circles, widening as they dip"
"The matrix of the heart, lift down the eye"
"That shrines the quiet lake and swells a tower..."
"The commodious, tall decorum of that sky"
"Unseals her earth, and lifts love in its shower."
HART: I'm done.
Hart, have you slept?
Not for a long time.
Hart, please go to bed.
HART: "Above the fresh ruffles of the surf"
"Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand"
"They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks"
"And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed Gaily digging and scattering"
"And in answer to their treble interjections"
"The sun beats lightning on the waves"
"The waves fold thunder on the sand"
"And could they hear me I would tell them"
"O brilliant kids, frisk with your dog"
"Fondle your shells and sticks, bleached By time and the elements"
"But there is a line You must not cross nor ever trust beyond it"
"Spry cordage of your bodies to caresses"
"Too lichen-faithful from too wide a breast."
"The bottom of the sea is cruel."
HART: Okay. Thank you.