Lyr Add: Ship's Glamour (Harry Kemp)

Subject: Lyr Add: Ship's Glamour (Harry Kemp)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 03 Aug 06 - 02:56 PM

I've been posting some of the sea poems by a early 1900's sailor-poet on another website called Oldpoetry: Click here for website

Here's an example of what he composed and some interesting notes that go with the poem.

SHIP'S GLAMOUR

(From TRAMP POET, edited by Mary Swenson, American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writer's Project 1936-1940, Interview 1938, pp. 13-14.)

When there wakes any wind to shake this place,
This wave-hemmed atom of land on which I dwell,
My fancy conquers time, condition, space, --
A trivial sound begets a miracle!
Last night there walked a wind, and, through chink,
It made one pan upon another clink
Where each hung close together on a nail --
Then fantasy put forth her fullest sail;
A dawn that never dies came back to me:
I heard two ship's bells echoing far at sea!
As perfect as a poet dreams a star
It was a full-rigged ship bore down the wind,
Piled upward with white-crowding spar on spar:
The wonder of it never leaves my mind.
We passed her moving proudly far at sea;
Night was not quite yet gone, nor day begun;
She stood, a phantom of sheer loveliness,
Against the first flush of an ocean dawn;
Then at the elevation of the sun,
Her ship's bell faintly sounded the event,
While ours with a responding tinkle went.
The beauty life evokes, outlasting men,
It fills my world from sea to sky again;
It opens on me like a shining scroll --
The ghost of God that ever haunts the soul!

Notes edited by Mary Swanson:

Kemp joined the crew of a cattle ship, South Sea King, bound for China. The ship plied through Southern waters, and for one whole summer, the weather was sullen and stiffling hot; the whole craft stank from the pent cattle in her hold, and the crew sweated and fought against the onslaught of vermin; work was heavy and grub was scarce -- but out of the whole voyage, Kemp remembers best an incident of cool beauty, such as the sea, with all its relentless hardships, can never fail to invoke:

"It was one unforgettable summer dawn, we were rounding the Cape of Good Hope. It was just before daylight, and foggy. I was on deck, and it looked like that prow was cutting its way like a steel knife through a loaf of cheese, the fog was so dense. Then like a miracle the mists began to lift, veil after veil, and let the sky through. And the sky was a delicate coral color from the rising sun -- it was gorgeous -- it was like music made visible. We sighted the flag ship Shaftsbury, an English vessel, off starboard; and through the slowly dispersing fog, came the faint tinkle of her warning bell. The South Sea King answered on a deep-toned dignified note. There was something so poignant and beautiful about the sound, that, standing alone, bundled in my oilskins, on the vacant deck streaked with brine and shining in the sun, I thrilled to wonder and the infinite mysticism of the sea.

"Ten years later, on a winter night in Provincetown, I was sitting alone in my shack there, reading by kerosene lamp. The windows were sighing against a strong wind. The wind must have touched a row of pots hung on the rough log wall outside, and clinked them together, because out of that dark cold night was born an exact incarnation of the sound of faintly ringing ships bells, invoking for me the identical mood of that brilliant summer dawn at sea off Good Hope. I picked up a pencil and wrote the poem 'Ship's Glamour'. The first version never needed revision."

Dave R. from Swansea has been adapting some of Kemp's poems for singing. This may be another candidate.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Ship's Glamour (Harry Kemp)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 04 Aug 06 - 01:36 PM

I've been doing some additional research on Kemp while he was working on plays with the Provincetown Players, along with playwright Eugene O'Neill, rabble rouser Jack Reed, newswoman Louise Bryant, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, and artists William and Marguerite Zorach. Later in 1922 the Zorachs worked with Kempt to produce his play Don Juan; the Zorachs had great fun designing a surrealist set for the play.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble