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:

    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)

    Under a world of whistles, wires and steam
    Caboose-like they go ruminating through
    Ohio, Indiana—blind baggage—
    To Cheyenne tagging . . . Maybe Kalamazoo. See Vagagonds
    Hart Crane (1899–1932)

    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)

    Behind
    My father’s cannery works I used to see
    Rail-squatters ranged in nomad raillery,
    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)