N A T E   P R I T T S
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ROBERT PENN WARREN'S AUDUBON: A VISION

—A READING

 

I Was Not the Lost Dauphin

 

If “a vision” then the language, necessarily, visionary. Blake & Whitman looking ahead to Olson. William Carlos Williams' In The American Grain. Hart Crane's The Bridge . This is the making of a man. & so is a man.

“[…]what/Is man but his passion?”

First, an encounter:

                                               Saw,
Eastward and over the cypress swamp, the dawn,
Redder than meat, break;
And the large bird[…]

& so, description:

Long neck outthrust, wings crooked to scull air, moved
In a slow calligraphy, crank, flat, and black against
The color of God's blood spilt[…]

Then, reflection:

Thought: “On that sky it is black.”
Thought: “In my mind it is white.”

Trigger: transcendence. A transmutation of nature in the forge-soul. The addition of the human. Recognition of the world by man equals creation of the world.

By man.

“Dawn: his heart shook in the tension of the world.”

 

 

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