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:

    The phonographs of hades in the brain
    Are tunnels that re-wind themselves, and love
    A burnt match skating in a urinal—
    Hart Crane (1899–1932)

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

    each prison crypt,
    of canyoned traffic . . . Confronting the Exchange,
    Surviving in a world of stocks,—
    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 seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,
    Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
    Over the chained bay waters Liberty—
    Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
    Hart Crane (1899–1932)