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:

    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)

    To course that span of consciousness thou’st named
    The Open Road—thy vision is reclaimed!
    What heritage thou’st signalled to our hands!
    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)

    The intent escalator lifts a serenade
    Stilly
    Of shoes, umbrellas, each eye attending its shoe, then
    Bolting outright somewhere above where streets
    Burst suddenly in rain. . . .
    Hart Crane (1899–1932)

    each prison crypt,
    of canyoned traffic . . . Confronting the Exchange,
    Surviving in a world of stocks,—
    Hart Crane (1899–1932)