My Grandmother’s Love Letters (1)
There are no stars to-night
But those of memory. (2)
Yet how much room for memory there is (3)
In the loose girdle of soft rain. (4)
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. (5)
Over the greatness of such space (6)
Steps must be gentle.
It is all hung by an invisible white hair.
It (7) trembles as birch (8) limbs webbing the air. (9)
And I ask myself:
“Are your fingers long enough to play
Old keys (10) 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. (11) And the rain continues on the roof
With such a sound of gently pitying laughter.
(1) This poem is about the memory of a grandmother.
(2) Only the stars of memory are in the sky.
(3) There is so much room for memory.
(4) Rain surrounding everything. (metaphor: soft rain=loose girdle)
(5) Decaying.
(6) The space of memory.
(7) The space.
(8) A tree with a smooth, often white bark and thin branches.
(9) Catch, or form a web in the air.
(10) (Music): (a) A lever on an instrument which is depressed by finger or foot to
produce a note, e.g. on a piano by finger, on an organ by foot, on
woodwind by finger (the levers covering the airholes).
(b) A group of notes based on a particular note and comprising a
scale.
(11) (a) To come to an obstacle to belief.
(b) To walk unsteadily or clumsily.
(c) To fall or move carelessly.
Analysis
“I can remember much forgetfulness.” (from ‘Forgetfulness’)
When Harold was nine, Grace (his mother) suffered a nervous breakdown and was
placed in a sanatorium after a bitter quarrel that demoralized the entire family.
Crane spent much of this time visiting relatives and living with his grandparents.
Later in his life, signing his name as Hart, Crane created a personal association
between his mother and his poetry. He would be for his grandmother, to the end
of her life, an irrepressible, high-spirited boy.
In his correspondence, Hart Crane speaks of the trials of writing this early poem
after the initial inspiration. He longs for the “silence” he feels is necessary to
properly address his subject. The poem becomes a poignant example of the poet’s
process, of the surprising turns a work might take, and of the possible inability to
fully embrace certain endeavours at various points in one’s life.
Early in the poem, the speaker tries to chart the constellation of his grandmother’s
life, via love letters discovered in the “corner of the roof.” He strives to find the
connection: “There are no stars tonight /But those of memory...in the loose girdle
of soft rain.” Crane paints the scene. Yet already in the first two stanzas, the
images suggest that the speaker feels the tug of impermanence: the old letters
“are brown and soft /And liable to melt as snow.” Crane continues to evoke an
elegiac tone with such images in the third stanza: “It is all hung by an invisible
white hair.” In contrast to the impermanence is the rain, constant throughout the
space of the poem, softly washing everything, from the surfaces, and from the
memory.
“My Grandmother’s Love letters” is linking memory and present reality. Crane
creates space in his memory for his grandmother’s love letters—that is, her
writing. Noting that the bridge between the past and the present “is all hung by an
invisible white hair,” Crane asks himself if his fingers are long enough to play old
keys that are merely echoes. The question Crane asks himself bridges temporal
gaps through remembering, reading, and interpenetrating with the past.
It is “the loose girdle of soft rain” that helps to create the music of the poem. The
piece has a generally iambic current, but it is indeed “loose” and “soft,” with an
“echo” of meter, rather than a tight pattern. The rhymes as well are “gentle” and
“soft”: these two words themselves are repeated in the poem. In Crane’s music,
the words “enough,” “Elizabeth,” “roof” and “soft” provide a light touch of
rhyme. Such delicacy makes his exact rhymes all the more intense when they
appear: “the invisible white hair” alongside the “birch limbs webbing the air.” He
leads his “grandmother by the hand /Through much of what she would not
understand.”
Crane asserts that his grandmother would be less sympathetic to his love letters
than he was to hers. And what sorts of
hings might block maternal sympathy and
understanding? And what do you make of the ‘sound of gently pitying laughter’?
The world is laughing at him for even thinking for a second that she might
understand. It’s real sad. This is a real sad poem.
The poem ends with the rain on the “roof” gently rhyming its “laughter” at the
poet’s attempts to inhabit the past, via his grandmother’s love life. The poem,
which initially tried to explore the world of those letters, now recognizes the
difficulty of the poet’s role as translator of certain experiences. In his
correspondence, after recounting his difficulties with the subject matter, Crane
states that the finished poem was “shorter than [he] had planned.”
When the speaker asks himself if his fingers are “long enough to play /Old keys
that are but echoes” and longs for the silence to be able to hear the music, one
senses not only the longing for his grandmother’s experience, but a longing to
feel such a love himself. The speaker seems to wonder at his own ability to love.
The poem becomes a quiet harbinger of his later “Voyages”: “Permit me voyage,
love, into your hands” (Voyages III). The rain’s “gently pitying laughter”
suggests a realization of the distance the speaker feels, not only from the
grandmother’s experience, but from his own ability to inhabit the “greatness of
such space.” In its longing, the poem, itself, feels like a love letter—to his
grandmother, to her life, and to his own desire to “carry back the music to its
source.”
Crane’s ultimate realization—that perhaps there is some family history to which
we have no rightful claim, which we cannot understand and in which we cannot
share—is heartbreaking:
“Forgive me for an echo of these things,
And let us walk through time with equal pride.” (from ‘Recitative’)
Nima Tahsili