Modern American Poetry

(^76) Alan Trachtenberg
out to find Pocahontas, the spirit of the land. With Rip Van Winkle his Muse
of Memory, and the Twentieth Century Limited his vehicle, he moved
westward out of the city to the Mississippi, the river of time. Borne backward
on the stream, he found the goddess, joined her dance of union with nature
and thus entered the archetype. Now he must return to the present, to bridge
the personal vision of the goddess and the actuality of modern America. An
older sailor (possibly Melville) in a South Street bar and an apparition of old
clipper ships from Brooklyn Bridge in “Cutty Sark,” are reminders of the
quest. But the old has lost its direction; the age requires a renewal.
“Cape Hatteras” is the center of the span that leaps from Columbus to
Brooklyn Bridge. The sea voyages are now done, the rondure accomplished.
Now, a complacent age of stocks, traffic, and radios has lost sight of its goal;
instead of a bridge, the age has created “a labyrinth submersed/ Where each
sees only his dim past reversed.” War, not peace and brotherhood, has
succeeded the engineers, and flights into space are undertaken, not by poets
but by war planes. “Cape Hatteras” poses the key questions of the poem:
“What are the grounds for hope that modern history will not destroy itself?”
“Where lies redemption?” “Is there an alternative to the chaos of the City?”
The answers are in Whitman’s “sea eyes,” “bright with myth.” He
alone has kept sight of the abstract form, the vision of ultimate integration.
His perspective is geological; he stands apart, with “something green/
Beyond all sesames of science.” Whitman envisioned the highest human
possibilities within the facts of chaos. It was he who “stood up and flung the
span on even wing/ Of that great Bridge, our Myth, whereof I sing.” He is a
presence: “Familiar, thou, as mendicants in public places.” He has kept faith,
even among the most disastrous circumstances of betrayal. With his help, the
flight into space might yet become “that span of consciousness thou’st
named/ The Open Road.”
“Cape Hatteras” introduces the violence and the promise, the despair
and the hope, of modern life. It argues for the effectiveness of ideals, for the
power of Utopia over history. The poet places his hand in Whitman’s, and
proceeds upon his quest. Returning from the sea in “Southern Cross,” he
searches for love in “National Winter Garden” and “Virginia,” for
community and friendship in “Quaker Hill,” and for art in “The Tunnel.”
He finds nothing but betrayal: the strip tease dancer burlesques Pocahontas,
the office girl is a pallid Mary, the New Avalon Hotel and golf course mock
the New England tradition, and the tunnel crucifies Poe. But throughout,
the poet’s hand is in Whitman’s, and at last, having survived the terrors of
“The Tunnel,” he arrives at the bridge.