November 27 -- James Agee

James Rufus Agee November 27, 1909 – May 16, 1955

Tennessee-born Agee (pronounced AY-jee) was a poet, novelist, journalist, screenwriter and influential film critic. In 1958 he won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for his autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family.

In 1934, he published his only volume of poetry, Permit Me Voyage.

Among his screenwriting credits in the 1950s: The African Queen (1951) and The Night of the Hunter (1955).

Agee was plagued by personal problems (he married three times), drank heavily, and smoked constantly. He died of a heart attack on May 16, 1955, at the age of 45.



Poems:


Lyrics for Lillian Hellman’s Candide
by James Agee

Reason, Magic, Skill and Love,
Frankly, I think poorly of.
Flesh and Figment, Brain and Breath.
All are parodies of Death.

Death alone can't paint it true;
Only Death can say for sure;
Who but Death can sing to you?
Death my dearest, sparse and pure.

Life is but a sorrowing haze
Through which we grope; and our five senses,
Trammeling snares. In all our way
Artists put their subtle fences:

Telling us that Life is All;
Cheating us with hints of glory;
Charming us. We fail, we fall
Stupefied, and buy their story.



Permit Me Voyage
by James Agee

Take these who will as may be: I
Am careless now of what they fail:
My heart and mind discharted lie
And surely as the nerved nail

Appoints all quarters on the north
So now it designates him forth
My sovereign God my princely soul
Whereon my flesh is priestly stole:

Whence forth shall my heart and mind
To God through soul entirely bow,
Therein such strong increase to find
In truth as is my fate to know:

Small though that be great God I know
I know in this gigantic day
What God is ruined and I know
How labors with Godhead this day:

How from the porches of our sky
The crested glory is declined:
And hear with what translated cry
The stridden soul is overshined:

And how this world of wildness through
True poets shall walk who herald you:
Of whom God grant me of your grace
To be, that shall preserve this race.

Permit me voyage, Love, into your hands.



Sure On This Shining Night
by James Agee

Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand'ring far
alone
Of shadows on the stars.


Composer Samuel Barber set "Sure On This Shining Night" to music.




--Cat