the ode class

I think, at it’s best, an ode should just reveal, expose a barely hidden treasure, a true but maybe obscured or over-looked beauty.   That is what Keats does with Autumn.  Exposing for us the “mellow fruitlessness”… Autumn as mystic Swelling the gourd, plumping the hazel shells.  Summer, this torrent of life too much for the Earth to contain, as sunshine brims over the “clammy cells” of the flowers and plants.  

But sometimes what the ode is revealing is within us, exposing to us a potential to see beauty.  The ode is a teacher.  Hart Crane teaches us how to look at the Brooklyn Bridge and all that surrounds it.  The ode says to us… see how aspirational those sails are, grip those images of freedom now, before “elevators drop us from our day…”  See that “silver-paced” city as the Oz that it is, it’s very being announcing “implicitly thy freedom staying thee!”  What a special thing.  But don’t stop there, as you move toward Manhattan.  Look up!  Look up to the “immaculate sigh of stars” over the sleepless bridge, over the sleepless river “vaulting to the sea.”  How much richer our lives can be, if we allow ourselves to be mesmerized.