The Broken Tower
The last new poem meant to be published in Hart Crane's life, 'The Broken Tower' (1932) has been widely acknowledged as one of the best lyrics of Crane's last years, if not his career. In keeping with the varieties and difficulties of Crane criticism, the poem has been interpreted widely--as death ode, life ode, process poem, visionary poem, poem on failed vision--but its biographical impetus out of Crane's first heterosexual affair (with Peggy Cowley, estranged wife of Malcolm Cowley) is generally undisputed. Written early in the year, the poem was rejected by Poetry, and only appeared in print (in The New Republic) after Crane's famous suicide by water. (Compare his great homosexual love-cycle, ' Voyages'.)
Read more about The Broken Tower: Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the words broken and/or tower:
“You have broken off a weighted leaf
in the wind,
it is hurled out,
whirls up and sinks,
a green stone.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)