Hart Crane

Hart Crane

Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932) was an American poet. Finding both inspiration and provocation in the poetry of T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote modernist poetry that was difficult, highly stylized, and ambitious in its scope. In his most ambitious work, The Bridge, Crane sought to write an epic poem, in the vein of The Waste Land, that expressed a more optimistic view of modern, urban culture than the one that he found in Eliot's work. In the years following his suicide at the age of 32, Crane has been hailed by playwrights, poets, and literary critics alike (including Robert Lowell, Derek Walcott, Tennessee Williams, and Harold Bloom), as being one of the most influential poets of his generation.

Read more about Hart Crane:  Life and Work, Poetics, Depictions, Bibliography

Famous quotes by hart crane:

    from above, thin squeaks of radio static,
    The captured fume of space foams in our ears—
    Hart Crane (1899–1932)

    Papooses crying on the wind’s long mane
    Screamed red skin dynasties that fled the brain,
    Hart Crane (1899–1932)

    The train rounds, bending to a scream,
    Taking the final level for the dive
    Under the river—
    Hart Crane (1899–1932)

    Bind us in time, O seasons clear, and awe.
    O minstrel galleons of Carib fire,
    Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
    Is answered in the vortex of our grave
    The seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.
    Hart Crane (1899–1932)

    So the 20th Century—so
    whizzed the Limited—roared by and left
    three men, still hungry on the tracks, ploddingly
    watching the tail lights wizen and converge, slip-
    ping gimleted and neatly out of sight.
    Hart Crane (1899–1932)