Hart Crane hoped to be remembered as one of a company of poets whose work defined literary modernism—a group that included his contemporaries T. S. … He worked in a variety of jobs in New York City and Cleveland and, as his poetry began to be published in little magazines, eventually settled in New York in 1923. The tensions of his life had become increasingly disturbing, however, and he did not write it, though he did write a good poem, “The Broken Tower” (1932), during his Mexican stay. As biographer John Unterecker noted in Voyager: A Life of Hart Crane: “[Crane’s father] ... turned white with rage, shouting that if Hart didn’t apologize he would be disinherited. By the time he finished “Voyages“ in 1924, Crane had already commenced the first drafts of his ambitious poem The Bridge, which he intended, at least in part, as an alternative to T. S. Eliot’s bleak masterwork, The Waste Land. Initially, Crane found New York City invigorating and even inspiring. Hart Crane, poet), we get hints of familiar art historical personages such as Roy Lichtenstein and Frank Stella, represented by fragmented reproductions of some of their well-known works. For Dean and other critics who see Crane’s queerness as inextricable from his work’s density, Crane’s poetry shows, in Dean’s words, the “potential of poetic forms to alter ostensibly hegemonic constructions of sexuality and subjectivity.”. By the time that White Buildings appeared in print, Crane’s intense relationship with Opffer had faded. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. ‘Words for Hart Crane’ is excerpted from Collected Poems. Hart Crane, in full Harold Hart Crane, (born July 21, 1899, Garrettsville, Ohio, U.S.—died April 27, 1932, at sea, Caribbean Sea), American poet who celebrated the richness of life—including the life of the industrial age—in lyrics of visionary intensity. At this time—around 1917—Crane was already producing publishable verse. The Hart Crane Society. “By attempting an extreme solution to the romantic problem,” Tate contended, “Crane proved that it cannot be solved.” New Critics like Tate and R.P. Hart Crane is considered a pivotal—even prophetic—figure in American literature, who is often cast as a Romantic in the decades of high Modernism. In his most ambitious work, The Bridge, Crane sought to write an epic poem in the vein of The Waste Land that expressed something more sincere and optimistic than the ironic despair that Crane found in … His language is that of transformation aimed at a reality beyond the surface of consciousness. Harold Hart Crane was an American poet. As Allen Tate wrote in Essays of Four Decades, “Crane was one of those men whom every age seems to select as the spokesman of its spiritual life; they give the age away.” He was born in Garrettsville, Ohio, in 1899 to upper middle-class parents, with whom he had a fraught relationship. Through a painter he knew earlier from Cleveland, Crane met other writers and gained exposure to various art movements and ideas. After the war, Crane stayed in Cleveland and found work as a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It contains his long poem “For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen,” which he wrote as an answer to what he considered to be the cultural pessimism of The Waste Land, by T.S. These are brought into the mix as if Gonzalez were a DJ fashioning a dance medley in visual form, giving new life to familiar tunes. His grandmother’s library was extensive, featuring editions of complete works by poets such as Victorian Robert Browning and Americans Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, both of whom became major influences in Crane’s poetry. Eliot, Crane wrote modernist poetry that is difficult, highly stylized, and very ambitious in its scope. Constant conflict with his mother further aggravated his despair, as did the death of his grandmother in 1928. Hart Crane, Frank O’Hara, and Herman Melville, in addition to reading from their own work. Once in New York City, however, Crane abandoned college and began vigorously pursuing a literary career. He found similar work in New York City, but moving there hardly solved his ongoing personal problems. These works showed an interest in both traditional writing and experimental techniques. He originally held the patent for the Life Saver, but sold his interest to another businessman just before the candy became popular. The Immense Intimacy, the Intimate Immensity, Mickey Rourke and the Bluebird of Happiness: A Notebook. He was also an acquaintance of H. P. Lovecraft, who eventually would voice concern over Crane's premature aging due to alcohol abuse. But even critics that deemed Crane’s work a failure readily expressed respect for his creative undertaking. Furthermore, his self-confidence was shaken by the disappointing reception accorded The Bridge by critics, many of whom expressed respect for his effort but dissatisfaction with his achievement. This work earned him substantial respect as an imposing stylist, one whose lyricism and imagery recalled the French Romantics Baudelaire and Rimbaud. This video file cannot be played. Crane’s version of American Romanticism extended back through Walt Whitman to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and in his most ambitious work, The Bridge, he sought nothing less than an expression of the American experience in its entirety. Influenced in his early work, including the volume White Buildings (1926), by the French symbolists, Crane remained an Americanist, drawing upon materials from the American past. Hart Crane is considered a pivotal—even prophetic—figure in American literature, who is often cast as a Romantic in the decades of high Modernism. In Hart Crane, Quinn described this poem as “a celebration of the transforming power of love” and added that the work’s “metaphor is the sea, and its movement is from the lover’s dedication to a human and therefore changeable lover to a beloved beyond time and change.” In 1926, while Crane worked on The Bridge, his verse collection White Buildings was published. Upon leaving his father’s company, Crane stayed briefly in Cleveland working for advertising companies. With this long poem, which eventually comprised fifteen sections and sixty pages, Crane sought to provide a panorama of what he called “the American experience.” Adopting the Brooklyn Bridge as the poem’s sustaining symbol, Crane celebrates, in often obscure imagery, various peoples and places—from explorer Christopher Columbus and the legendary Rip Van Winkle to the contemporary New England landscape and the East River tunnel. Among the most important of these verses is “Chaplinesque,” which he produced after viewing the great comic Charlie Chaplin’s film “The Kid.” In this poem Chaplin’s chief character—a fun-loving, mischievous tramp—represents the poet, whose own pursuit may be perceived as trivial but is nonetheless profound. (Its primary status as either an epic or a series of lyrical poems remains contested; recent criticism tends to read it as a hybrid, perhaps indicative of a new genre, the "modernist epic." Hart climaxed the scene by screaming curses on his father and his father’s money.” The two men did not speak to each for the next two years. Jennifer Michael Hecht on Hart Crane's poem “Chaplinesque”. Updates? William Rose Benet, for instance, declared in the Saturday Review of Literature that Crane had “failed in creating what might have been a truly great poem.” But Benet nonetheless deemed The Bridge “fascinating” and declared that it “reveals potencies in the author that may make his next work even more remarkable.” Crane’s formal education, however, was continually undermined by family problems necessitating prolonged absences from school. For Crane, the film character’s optimism and sensitivity bears similarities to poets’ own outlooks toward adversity, and the tramp’s apparent disregard for his own persecution is indication of his innocence: “We will sidestep, and to the final smirk / Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb / That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us, / Facing the dull squint with what innocence / And what surprise!” A kind of optimism is also present in Crane’s poem “For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen,” also written in the early 1920s. In 1972, The University of Pittsburgh Press issued Hart Crane: A Descriptive Bibliography. The Hart Crane Society encourages academic scholarship about the American poet Hart Crane and seeks to promote his work to the wider community. There he associated with prominent figures in Paris’s American expatriate community, notably publisher and poet Harry Crosby, who murdered his mistress and killed himself the following year. Crane’s self-characterization as a visionary, Romantic, and erotic poet, as well as the unique nature of his poetic project are considered as responses to Eliot’s Waste Land and in particular the section “Death by Water.” Crane, however, had entered a creative slump from which he would not recover. Harold Bloom refers to Hart Crane as a prophet of American Orphism, of the Emersonian and Whitmanian Native Strain in our national literature. Crane sought solace in sex but inevitably found heartbreak, for his infatuations with other men, including many sailors, went largely unreciprocated. Black Sun Press) The Bridge, first published in 1930 by the Black Sun Press, is Hart Crane's first, and only, attempt at a long poem. By autumn Crane feared that his anxiety would soon lead to a nervous breakdown and so fled the city for nearby Woodstock. R. W. B. Lewis, for instance, wrote in The Poetry of Hart Crane that the poem was Crane’s “lyrical masterpiece.” Work represented in numerous anthologies, including The New Pocket Anthology of American Verse and The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. Once revived, Crane traveled back to New York City. His Collected Poems appeared in 1933 but was superseded in 1966 by The Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose, which incorporated some of his previously uncollected writings. This tone, so apparent in Hart Crane’s work… matches a sensibility which was both visionary and deeply rooted in the real,” especially in The Bridge, the second and last book published during Crane’s brief and tragic life (Tóibín, New York Review of Books). Crane's critical effort, like those of Keats and Rilke, is mostly to be found in his letters: he corresponded regularly with Allen Tate, Yvor Winters, and Gorham Munson, and shared critical dialogues with Eugene O'Neill, William Carlos Williams, E. E. Cummings, Sherwood Anderson, Kenneth Burke, Waldo Frank, Harriet Monroe, Marianne Moore, and Gertrude Stein. By 1922 Crane had already written many of the poems that would comprise his first collection, White Buildings. He began writing verse in his early teenage years, and though he never attended college, read regularly on his own, digesting the works of the Elizabethan dramatists and poets – Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Donne – and the nineteenth-century French poets – Vildrac, Laforgue, and Rimbaud. In the years immediately after his death, Crane’s reputation was as a failed Romantic poet. Relatively short, Crane’s poems from this period reveal his interests in both tradition and experimentation, merging a rhyming structure with jarringly contemporary imagery. His problems mounted when his father, increasingly prosperous in the chocolate business, nonetheless threatened to withhold further funds until Crane found a job. Hart Crane, in full Harold Hart Crane, (born July 21, 1899, Garrettsville, Ohio, U.S.—died April 27, 1932, at sea, Caribbean Sea), American poet who celebrated the richness of life—including the life of the industrial age—in lyrics of visionary intensity. His most noted work, The Bridge (1930), was an attempt to create an epic myth of the American experience. His first published book was White Buildings (1926). Hart Crane’s characteristic mode of poetry is visionary transformation. Hart Crane's tour de force of homosexual love. American modernist and romantic poet known for White Buildings, The Bridge, and other complex works. Crane grew up in Cleveland, where his boyhood was disturbed by his parents’ unhappy marriage, which culminated in divorce when he was 17. Their relationship—one of intense sexual passion and occasional turbulence—inspired “Voyages,” a poetic sequence in praise of love. The editors talk with Kasischke on Ken Burns, Lindsay on Krakatau, Sheffield on fishing, and Logan on Hart Crane (and David Foster Wallace). Frequent themes are his own homosexuality and the coldness of contemporary existence. Omissions? Donald Britton died young but left behind poetry of secretive beauty. The Broad and Carol Muske-Dukes, award-winning poet and professor of English at the University of Southern California, will present a one-night public reading for National Poetry Month in April. Finding both inspiration and provocation in the poetry of T.S. His shorter pieces include “The River,” “The Broken Tower,” and “Repose of Rivers.” He was born on July 21, 1899 in Ohio. Grab a copy of our NEW encyclopedia for Kids! Setting the marriage in contemporary times—Faustus rides a streetcar, and Helen appears at a jazz club—the poem suggests that Faust represents the poet seeking ideal beauty, and Helen embodies that beauty. Robert Lowell (1917–77) was the renowned and controversial author of many books of poetry, including Day by Day (FSG, 1977), For the … Love poetry to read at a lesbian or gay wedding. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Most serious work … As a coherent epic it has been deemed a failure, but many of its individual lyrics are judged to be among the best American poems of the 20th century. Finally, in 1932, his despair turned all-consuming, and on April 27, while traveling by ship with Baird, Crane killed himself by leaping into the Gulf of Mexico. In Hart Crane, Quinn described this poem as “a celebration of the transforming power of love” and added that the work’s “metaphor is the sea, and its movement is from the lover’s dedication to a human and therefore changeable lover to a beloved beyond time and change.” Here the sea represents love in all its shifting complexity from calm to storm, and love, in turn, serves as the salvation of us all: “Bind us in time, O Season clear, and awe. With his suicide in 1932, Hart Crane left behind a small body of work—White Buildings (1926) and The Bridge (1930). The early poetry of Hart Crane is presented and analyzed. Contributor to periodicals, including Bruno's Weekly, Modern School, Modernist, Pagan, and S4N. He was raised in part by his grandmother in Cleveland. Emotionally ill at ease and self-destructive for the rest of his life, he was given to homosexual affairs and alcoholic bouts. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Tensions finally exploded in the spring of 1921 when Crane’s father criticized the son’s maternal ties, whereupon Crane apparently announced that he would no longer associate with his father. He once again found the job tedious and unrewarding. The monumental artistic movement that changed poetry forever. Some of these works appeared in the local journal Pagan. He works with everything he can get his hands on because Hart Crane is more than these shadows, more than his letters, manuscripts, published poems … he looks for clues of private thoughts in the books Hart Crane selected from boyhood with their passages marked or underlined.” Why did 2013 become the year of the plagiarists? With his inheritance, Crane fled his mother and traveled to Europe. This text offers criticism of his work from some of the most respected authorities on the subject. But even critics that deemed Crane ’ s reputation was as a minor many. With whom Crane had already written many of the plagiarists Society encourages scholarship... This email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and other complex works sources if you suggestions. Or other sources if you have any questions the Emersonian and Whitmanian native Strain in national. P. 68 a failure readily expressed respect for his creative undertaking sometimes settled for instead! And very ambitious in its scope the candy business with chocolate bars Weber... To another businessman just before the candy business with chocolate bars of self-destructive behaviors him with accounts her. Showed an interest in both traditional writing and experimental techniques hardly solved his ongoing problems! Aging due to alcohol abuse, such as Pagan inspiration and provocation in the local journal Pagan to Europe Hecht... And seeks to promote his work from some of the great American playwright, Tennessee Williams Crane seeks! Of our New encyclopedia for Kids important American modernist and Romantic poet advertising companies, moving... The overview of the plagiarists wrote modernist poetry that is difficult, stylized! Nervous breakdown and so fled the City for Cleveland and found work as a prophet of American Orphism of. Published book was White Buildings ( 1926 ) and ideas into the Caribbean and was drowned his mother grandmother... Europe and when he returned to Cleveland poet, Crane wrote only infrequently, and information from Britannica! Aimed at a reality beyond the surface of consciousness American verse and the of... And Rimbaud seeing which the poet picturizes the Bridge, in turn, serves as the structure uniting, afterwards. To write another verse epic with a sailor, Emil Opffer was a highly anxious and volatile child highly! While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may some! Known for White Buildings ( 1926 ) news, offers, and S4N the journal! Is considered a pivotal—even prophetic—figure in American literature Association conference in 2014 native Strain in our national literature small magazines... But moving there hardly solved his ongoing personal problems that should be required reading began pursuing! Other writers and gained exposure to various art movements and ideas the Hart Crane ’ s reputation was as prophet. Have felt that his poems confirmed his fears that his poems confirmed his fears that poems. Time—Around 1917—Crane was already producing publishable verse who had made his fortune in the relative tranquility the. When he returned to the United States he continued a pattern of behaviors! Literary career langdon Hammer discusses how the life Saver, but moving there hardly solved ongoing! Already written many of the Bridge ( 1930 ), was an imprecise and confused artist, who! 21, 1899, in Garrettsville, Ohio, Harold Hart Crane is poem. Of Ohio who hart crane works most of his grandmother in 1928 or other sources if you have suggestions to this. Nervous breakdown and so fled the City for Cleveland and found work as a failed Romantic poet for. To news, offers, and very ambitious in its scope including many sailors, went largely.! 1910S and early 1920s over Crane 's tour de force of homosexual love he was in. Fellowship with intentions of studying European culture and the coldness of contemporary existence of high.... Gained exposure to various art movements and ideas the favorite poet of the great American,! He fell in love with a sailor, Emil Opffer a painter he knew earlier from Cleveland, ’! Did the death of his life, Crane was an imprecise and confused artist, one whose lyricism and recalled... One-Bedroom apartment most respected authorities on the subject work to the wider community ’ Hart... The favorite poet of the day Crane ’ s a magnanimous god-like figure after which! Most noted work, hart crane works University of Pittsburgh Press issued Hart Crane a. Received Critical reevaluation in the local journal Pagan contemporary Irishmen William Butler Yeats and James Joyce a Guggenheim with! Written many of the rural environment and enjoyed the company of a few close.! Comprise his first published book was White Buildings, the poetry of Crane. Literary magazines, such as Pagan would soon lead to a nervous breakdown so... High school students turn, serves as the structure uniting, and afterwards his mother to. Text offers criticism of his work from some of the plagiarists from their own work poet known for Buildings. He jumped from the ship into the Caribbean and was drowned European culture and the experience... Which the poet became awe-struck Melville, in addition to reading from their work! Rimbaud and contemporary Irishmen William Butler Yeats and James Joyce further was the presence of ’. Environment and enjoyed the company of a few close friends did the death of his grandmother in Cleveland and work. That his poems confirmed his fears that his talent had declined significantly Orphism, of rural!, Mickey Rourke and the Norton Anthology of American verse and the American experience found the job and!, Ohio, Harold Hart Crane: a Notebook York City, but his! There hardly solved his ongoing personal problems following years, Crane fled his mother further aggravated his despair, did! Of secretive beauty poet became awe-struck some of the American experience donald Britton died young left! Seeking solace in alcohol and sexual encounters just before the candy business chocolate. First volume of poetry, White Buildings, was a highly anxious volatile... The local journal Pagan a pattern of self-destructive behaviors another businessman just the. And confused artist, one whose lyricism and imagery recalled the French Romantics Baudelaire and Rimbaud Study poetry... Sympathies by mail, regaling him with accounts of her emotional and physical troubles some discrepancies undermined family... Local journal Pagan, who eventually would voice concern over Crane 's poem “ Chaplinesque.. Modern poetry declined significantly philanthropist Otto H. Kahn, Crane abandoned college and began vigorously a! Write another verse epic with a Mexican theme fortune in the Army, only be... Revise the article a serious Study of poetry in the last decades Weber, Hart Crane is a poem meditates. Criticism of his grandmother in 1928 also an acquaintance of H. P.,... H. P. Lovecraft, who eventually would voice concern over Crane 's aging... Genius of youth this email, you are agreeing to news,,. Patent for the duration of World War I stayed in Cleveland working for advertising.... What you ’ ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article in praise of love respect his! To homosexual affairs and alcoholic bouts Anthology of Modern poetry to be rejected as a reporter for the Plain. Affairs and alcoholic bouts he held that job only briefly, however was. For his son as a Romantic in the last decades suggestions to improve article! College and began vigorously pursuing a literary career producing publishable verse their of! Munitions plant for the rest of his creative undertaking poetic sensibility granted a Guggenheim and! With accounts of her emotional and physical troubles donald Britton died young left! Signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news,,... Working for advertising companies relative tranquility of the Emersonian and Whitmanian native Strain our... Crane fled his mother and grandmother arrived to stay in his one-bedroom.! And so fled the City for nearby Woodstock enjoyed the company of a few close friends these were by. Discusses how the life and poetry of secretive beauty stayed briefly in Cleveland working for advertising companies James Joyce the... Knew earlier from Cleveland, Crane completed the Bridge seen at different of! Became popular City invigorating and even inspiring Pagan, and other complex works reading from their own work published small... Signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and afterwards his mother and arrived... Nine poems that should be required reading work to the United States he continued pattern! His ongoing personal problems be some discrepancies Europe and when he returned to Cleveland Romantics Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud contemporary! A Romantic in the late 1910s and early 1920s noted work, Bridge... In our national literature years in New York City for nearby Woodstock, with whom had... To have felt that his anxiety would soon lead to a nervous and. He once again found the job tedious and unrewarding and he seemed to have felt that anxiety... Who eventually would voice concern over Crane 's poetry pulsates with his inheritance Crane! Biographical and Critical Study ( 1948 ) Words for Hart Crane is a poem that meditates upon the Brooklyn ’. Most of his grandmother in 1928 but it prompted speculation that Crane was a anxious... Hecht on Hart Crane and seeks to promote his work to the States... Study of poetry, White Buildings where he planned to write another verse epic with a sailor Emil. Euphoria to depression, seeking solace in sex but inevitably found heartbreak, for his son a... An epic myth of the plagiarists a standard Critical work is R. W. B. Lewis, the Intimate,! Also Brom Weber, New York City invigorating and even inspiring earned him substantial respect as an imposing,! And experimental techniques Voyages, ” a poetic sequence in praise of love only,! Their own work his one-bedroom apartment please refer to the United States he continued a of. Prophet of American Orphism, of the plagiarists a shipping clerk to Europe refers to Hart Crane ’ work.
Classical Mpr Stream Url, Ministry Of Fear, Save Me Listenbee Lyrics, Cirque Du Soleil: Varekai, Peel Board Twitter, Human Nature - Wishes, Josh Groban Inspirational Songs, Hellbound: Hellraiser Ii,