
To empty rooms (PoemTalk #204)
Horace Gregory, "Chorus for Survival"

Al Filreis convened Christos Kalli, Jon Hoel, and Henry Steinberg to talk about two poems about the once hugely famous and now mostly forgotten communist and communist-affiliated poet who thrived for decades but most notably in the 1930s. In the middle of the Depression decade — in the momentous year of 1935 — he published the book Chorus for Survival with Covici-Friede. Our group discussed two poems in the Chorus for Survival series — numbers 5 and 11. In 1944, Gregory traveled to Cambridge, Mass., to record some poems for the Harvard Vocarium, performing six poems include the two we discuss. Jon and Al had met up nearly a year before, discovered a common interest in Gregory, and have co-curated this episode.
For the next episode of PoemTalk, Bob Holman journeys from his beloved New York to join Al and two other friends to talk about several poems of the late June Jordan.
Zach Carduner and Magda Andrews-Hoke directed and engineered this episode, and Zach Carduner was the editor as always.
Chorus for Survival No. 5
Under the stone I saw them flow,
Express Times Square at five o’clock,
Eyes set in darkness, trampling down
All under, limbs and bodies driven
In crowds, crowds over crowds, the street
Exit in starlight and dark air
To empty rooms, to empty arms
Wallpaper gardens flowering there,
Error and loss upon the walls.
I saw each man who rode alone
Prepare for sleep in deeper sleep
And there to ride, sightless, unknown,
To darkness that no day recalls.
Riderless home, shoulder to head,
Feet on concrete and steel to ride
Times Square at morning and repeat
Tomorrow’s five o’clock in crowds
(red light and green for speed) descend,
Break entrance home to love or hate
(I read the answer at the door)
The destination marked “Return,
No stop till here; this is the end.”