Assaulting the Backbone of Beauty
The deliberate program, then, of a “break” with the past or tradition seems to me to be a sentimental fallacy. ~ Hart Crane
Pathetic prophet Crane did not foresee
de Kooning or that Jackson Pollock reek
On canvass. Crane’s sentimentality,
Like Oedipus’s eyeballs, was too weak
To stymie “Fountain” and Duchamp
Descending into Modernism on
A factory fire escape. The Twombly swamp
Crane couldn’t have imagined through the dawn
Of Cubism’s outrage. Bacon’s evils
And Pablo’s sins in every medium
Resulted in unimaginable upheavals
Against the past. Resultant tedium
Of ugliness from animosities
Against the classic is atrocities.
