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:

    John, Jake or Charley, hopping the slow freight
    —Memphis to Tallahassee—riding the rods,
    Blind fists of nothing, humpty-dumpty clods.
    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)

    Scatter these well-meant idioms
    Into the smoky spring that fills
    The suburbs, where they will be lost.
    They are no trophies of the sun.
    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)

    Stars prick the eyes with sharp ammoniac proverbs,
    Hart Crane (1899–1932)