After re-reading Stephen Crane’s short story The Open Boat, Martha is reminded of one of Crane’s poems about perspective, known as A man saw a ball of gold in the sky. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Gold in the Sky”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
Recently, I revisited Stephen Crane’s wonderful short story, The Open Boat.
Did you read this in high school, Grant?
I didn’t, no.
It’s worth reading. It’s online. You can find it.
It’s this great story about a true-life experience he had when he was shipwrecked and almost died at sea.
And it’s a great story about striving and perseverance and frustration and being misunderstood
and coming to terms with a vast indifference of nature.
And I was reminded of one of his poems that’s also about striving, and I think of it a whole lot.
I think you’ll like it.
A man saw a ball of gold in the sky.
He climbed for it, and eventually he achieved it.
It was clay.
Now this is the strange part.
When the man went to the earth and looked again, lo, there was the ball of gold.
Now this is the strange part.
It was a ball of gold.
I, by the heavens, it was a ball of gold.
That’s nice.
It’s beautiful.
I love that, about seeing something in the distance
and you think it’s going to be so great,
and then you get there and it’s not,
and then you get away from it, and it’s great again.
We love to hear about poems that you love.
You can send them to words@waywordradio.org.
And you can always call us about language questions,
877-929-9673.
