By the Sea, By the Sea . . .

In "Suicide Off Egg Rock" Sylvia writes:

Sun struck the water like a damnation.

In "Voyages I" Hart Crane writes:

The sun beats lightning on the waves . . . .

Someone pointed out (Acharya S?) that the path sunlight makes on water may have been the origin of the story of Christ walking on same.

In 1926, Crane ended a poem with the line:

The bottom of the sea is cruel.

In 1932 he drowned himself, going off the stern of a ship en route from Mexico to New York, his expenses having been covered by a Guggenheim fellowship, the boats lowered to look for him coming up empty.

And reading Sylvie is a gas. Nothin' says lovin' like something from the oven. She could have been a warm writer had she wanted. She wrote:

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

She had no match.


- R